Express- An Ex Files Special
by sevenpercent
Summary: Post return, pre So3, Sherlock and those he cares for are challenged to put into words what they think about each other. Revelations and misunderstandings result in equal measure, with some resolutions, too.
1. Chapter 1

**Express- an Ex Files Special**

**Express /ɪkˈsprɛs,ɛk-/**

_Verb _

_-_convey (thought or feeling) in words or by gestures and conduct

-press or squeeze out, extracting or expelling through force

* * *

**Chapter One: Mrs Hudson**

"Is it working?" The microphone caught the sound of fumbling as the recorder was picked up. Sherlock could visualise the scene as she brought it up close enough to read the digital counter. She was still vain enough to not use her reading glasses as often as she needed to. Then he heard a bit of a thud as she put it back down on the table. Then there was a nervous sort of clearing of her throat.

"I'm not really sure why this has to be recorded. I'm more than happy just to say all this to Sherlock."

He sighed. She really didn't understand that if she'd tried to do so face-to-face, he'd probably have filtered her out. As much as he had come to rely on her presence at Baker Street, it wasn't for the conversation.

"Right." She sounded a little self-conscious, but determined. "That nice therapist wants me to tell you about the first time we met. I'm certain you remember that; you remember _everything_, even to the point of telling me when I've moved your things even a millimetre when I'm dusting. So, as your memory is that good, you don't need me to remind you that it was in 1998, and it was on a bus- one of those horrid Greyhound things. I got on in Savannah, Georgia, heading to Miami. I'm not actually sure I remember where you got on…" Her voice lost steam as he imagined her floundering around trying to squeeze the memory out of some dusty, cobwebbed cupboard in her kitchen. "…but it was definitely before me. You were asleep, if I recall, although how you could sleep through all that racket and the movement of the bus, well it was enough to give me motion sickness even before we pulled out of the bus station."

Sherlock had not been asleep, just keeping his eyes closed. There were advantages to taking a bus. To start with, he could pay cash, so his credit card details wouldn't show up as being anywhere other than Manhattan when his brother checked to see he was still in New York. It had not been easy to convince Mycroft to let him spend the summer hols in the USA. He'd managed to get an internship at Columbia University, promising to spend the entire time on campus, working at the chemistry research project on the effects of RNA gene mutations in mitochondrial DNA.

"I've been recommended by my biochemistry lecturer at Cambridge; it would be churlish to turn it down." After being burdened with many tedious fraternal lectures about keeping out of trouble, he'd been allowed to come. Little did his brother know that he'd finished the work he was expected to do within six weeks, leaving him free to travel on his own for the remaining seven weeks. He'd bribed his lab partner into sending emails from his university account, a series of boring updates checking in with Big Brother to reassure him that Sherlock's nose was pressed firmly to the proverbial grindstone. While he was away from New York, he called and got the graduate student to read him the emails in response, and then type his reply. The six hour time difference helped him dodge the need for actual calls. He kept his phone off, and only responded to Mycroft when he was able to use the IP routing system that another lab technician had figured out. Useful- the tech was a hacker in his spare time, and guaranteed it was fool-proof. "Just ring this number first, and then the number you want to call; it routes everything through the cell mast nearest to Columbia." Sherlock decided he needed to find someone similar when he got back to Cambridge to teach him how to do it himself; being able to fool his brother into thinking he was somewhere he wasn't sounded like an invaluable life skill, and far more useful than most of the drivel he was learning.

The other advantage of bus travel was that once out of the stations, the lights in the bus were turned off, and he could sleep undisturbed. Greyhound busses were the transport of the poor in the USA, and stopped at quite a few places down the Eastern seaboard. Sherlock had gone through a series of towns whose names he immediately deleted: New Brunswick, Trenton, Philadelphia,Wilmington, Washington DC. To hide his trail a bit more, he had not bought a through ticket, but transferred to a new bus every so often, buying a ticket with cash. This bus he'd picked up in Richmond, then endured stops at Fayetteville and Walterborough, before Savannah. Sherlock got off just often enough to stretch his legs, head into the station's loos where he would top up the cocaine with another injection. The trip to Miami was proving to be quite enjoyable until Waynesborough when a rather obnoxious passenger got on; he played his Walkman so loud that Sherlock could hear the annoying rap music that was loud enough for the tinny hissing to be heard two rows away.

The woman who got on last at Savannah struggled; she was carrying a large over the shoulder bag and some shopping bags from high end fashion stores. Well dressed, late middle-aged, wearing a bit of make-up- and so not the type who usually took a bus. She seemed flustered. There were almost no seats left on the bus- just the back bench- notoriously sick-making, and so avoided by the seasoned travellers. She sidled down the aisle and stopped at the seat two rows in front of where Sherlock was pretending to sleep. The window seat was occupied by Walkman man- a very large Latino who was wearing expensive trainers, low slung cargo pants and a white tee shirt stained with food, which he enthusiastically munched. He was plugged in with expensive earphones, and occasionally would sing along hideously out of tune. The accented voice was Cuban, as much as Sherlock's ear could tell over the vocal massacre of a popular rap track. The gold chains and prison tatts were a giveaway sign of something else; this was a gang member and the other passengers had given him a wide berth. He'd put his backpack of CDs and snacks on the seat next to him. Sherlock wondered if there was a gun in there too. He'd been slightly amazed at the number of guns in America- being so available and so obvious was a shock. _Cowboys, indeed._ Despite the bus being full, no one had dared ask Walkman guy to move his stuff off the seat.

"Excuse me, young man. Could you please remove your things and let me sit down?"

Sherlock opened his eyes properly. It had been almost two months since he'd heard a British accent, and hers stood out- East End. Not cockney _per se_, probably born somewhere in the northern Home Counties before moving to East London. Working class, but with some education. He noted the wedding ring and the expensive earrings.

There was no response from the gang man. He had his raybans on and was moving to the beat of his music.

The woman put her bags down on the floor and tapped him on the shoulder. "I said, excuse me, but I would like to sit down."

"_Mama la pinga_." This was growled, as the shades were pulled up and the man took a good look at her.

Sherlock winced.

Unmoved by the curse, the woman just continued. "I'm sorry, but I don't speak Spanish. Oh lord I hope you do understand English, as I've just had a monstrously bad day. My car broke down and I have to get back to Miami tonight. So, please just put your things in your lap and let me sit down."

The bus was now pulling away from the station, and when it took a sharp turn to re-join the main road, she lurched and half fell against the seat.

"_Piérdete__, puta sucia_." This time, he said it with enough menace to communicate his meaning, even if the woman didn't speak Spanish. Startled, she regained her balance and responded. "There's no need to be rude, young man. I paid a fare just like you did, so unless you can produce another ticket for that seat, I intend taking it."

Sherlock admired her bravery, if not her intelligence. A quick squint down the aisle behind her showed him that the driver was studiously ignoring the confrontation. He prevaricated. On the one hand, he didn't want to get involved. On the other hand, the guy was a dickhead and his music and munching had annoyed Sherlock.

He got up and stretched, limbering up his neck muscles.

oOo

"Well, I don't know what he said, do I? I don't speak Spanish… or Cuban, for that matter- they're not exactly the same. Whatever it was, the rude boy just got up and went to the back of the bus, and I had a delightful journey."

Then he heard her giggle. "I wished I did speak Spanish, because whatever was said, that fellow went beetroot red with embarrassment and wouldn't even _look_ at me. He just scuttled off to the back of the bus. When we stopped at Jacksonville, there was a layover for a driver change, and I bought the lad who rescued me a breakfast, insisted on it, in fact. He looked so thin."

Sherlock grimaced. Mrs Hudson was always going on about his eating.

"Over American pancakes and maple syrup, I introduced myself and was delighted to learn that he was English- posh too; I could tell from his accent. He hadn't said a word in English on the bus, just the Spanish. Appearances are so deceiving. Anyway, we got to talking…"

Sherlock smirked. She had done all the talking that day- all about her husband, Frank, and how he'd moved to Miami and she didn't really like it much- too hot, she got sunburned, and he was never around these days, so she was bored and a bit miserable. He'd deduced that there was more to it than boredom; the carefully applied make-up could not quite hide from his eyes the fading bruises, so battered as well as bored. In the end she'd given him her address, and told him to "look me up sometime; I'll take you to tea in Coral Gables. I'm in need of cheering up these days." She knew a tea shop there that sold proper Twinings teas, even had crumpets. He didn't explain to her that the reason he wanted to go to Miami had nothing to do with tea. He was after another kind of stimulant. He'd taken the slip of paper on it with her phone number and stuffed it in a pocket, knowing he'd never make contact with her again.

oOo

Martha Hudson pushed the pause button. She'd gone to spend Christmas with her sister, taking the device with her. While her sister went off to midnight mass, Martha put her feet up and brought the recorder out of her handbag. This time, that nice woman therapist had given her Sherlock's version. In the two minutes she'd just listened to, he had given the dry facts of their first meeting. In his version, he'd translated what that rude boy had said, and it wasn't polite. But, then she'd known that much from the tone at the time; just wasn't going to be pushed around by someone who wasn't even half her age. She'd wanted to shame the young man into respecting her, but it hadn't worked. Until Sherlock came up the aisle and leaned over to whisper something in the man's ear.

Thumbing the play button, she heard him resume.

"I told the fat idiot that you were the English nanny working for Chris Paciello, a South Beach nightclub owner famous for his close connections with the Bensonhurst Mafia and the Colombo crime family. No Miami gang member would dare risk insulting that crew. And a _nanny_…" There was a snort that she recognised. "Americans- even gang members- all watched Mary Poppins as kids."

She started to giggle. That was Sherlock all over. Even then. When the skinny teenager showed up at her rented house in Deland, South Miami, two weeks later, she'd been surprised, but one look was enough for her to take him in. He'd been beaten up- badly- and was high, as well. He said all he wanted was a safe place to crash. His wallet and backpack had been stolen; only his passport tucked into his underpants had escaped. He couldn't afford a hotel, nor could he go to a hospital because his drug use would be reported, and he had to stay off the police register or his brother would force him to return home immediately.

She'd taken him in and, as a result, he'd been there three nights later when Frank finally came home, wearing a bloodied shirt of his own. Only his was covered in the blood of the two undercover policemen. When she tried to convince Frank that it was really time to fold up his drug business and move back to London into something legitimate, he'd disagreed, and she told him that she'd had enough. For years, she'd been unhappy but been afraid to leave him. But, she couldn't turn a blind eye anymore to what he was doing, so she was going to leave him. Later, she realised her timing was poor- he'd already killed two people that night, and he started to take out his anger on her, too. She'd felt the back of his hand before, but not like this. The noise of their fight brought Sherlock out of the spare bedroom and once again, he rescued her. As cool as a cucumber, the teenager stood there with the little pistol taken from her handbag and told her husband that he had called the police. Frank did the sensible thing, and ran for his life. Three days later, he was arrested. Three weeks later, Sherlock had helped the police find the evidence they needed to convict him, and sentence him to be executed. She mourned the death of a man she had once loved, but was determined to move back to Britain and start over.

So far, Sherlock's recording covered none of this. Well, what did she expect? The therapist had said just to cover the facts of their first meeting. She listened as the baritone voice resumed.

"Now that the facts are known, I am supposed to 'express' my…" there was a pause. "um…_feelings_ about it." He said the word as if it was slightly odious. "I didn't have any. I just wanted the git with the loud music to move, and this seemed a good opportunity to do so." There was another pause. "And it annoyed me, his attitude. I hate it when people are just gratuitously offensive to someone who doesn't deserve it. And she didn't. Not then." There was another pause, and then a quiet, "and certainly not later." A sigh, and then in a more upbeat tone, "It was, for the record, the start of my first _case_. If I hadn't figured out that her husband was keeping the incriminating data in a sealed container inside their air-conditioner unit, the prosecution case would have failed. So, thank you, Mrs Hudson for playing a part in the launch of my career."

She smiled. _I should have said a bigger thank you, Sherlock, in my recording._ But, in a funny way, she knew she didn't have to. And he didn't have to tell her about his feelings. She'd always known. Actions spoke louder than words.

* * *

**Author's note:**This is the first of the recordings that Sherlock's circle have been asked to produce as part of his therapy, described in _Magpie: One for Sorrow. _While they will stand more or less alone, it will help if you read them while waiting for the next chapter. Tomorrow I will post Chapter Two- which is John's first recording.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: ****John- (Part One)**

* * *

He was sitting in the drawing room of Hartswood Manor's so called "big house", the one that he and Mary had first been shown around by George Hayter only a fortnight before. _Feels like a lifetime ago. _Mary was sitting across from him, her feet tucked up on the well-worn red velour covered chair. John was sitting on the matching sofa, with his leg elevated. For some reason, that seemed to ease the pain, although why it should defied explanation, given that it was psychosomatic and he damned well knew it, too.

George picked them up from the station, drove them back to the Manor and made them feel welcome, settling them into the bedroom on the first floor of the big house. "I hope you don't mind. Diane believes that it is important to give everyone a bit of space. Sherlock's out at the moment- gone for a long walk up to Box Hill. But, he's agreed to let you hear his recordings, and he said specifically that he wants _both_ of you to hear it at the same time. He's going to listen to yours when he gets back. Then Diane will drop by to see how you want to proceed, and do the same for Sherlock."

The two of them had just listened to the recording of Sherlock's description of his first meeting with John. Delivered in a dry monotone voice, it sounded like someone reading from a telephone book. Even so, John learned two new things from it- first, that Sherlock had been forced into finding a lodger by both Lestrade and Mycroft, and that their motivations had not been about "sharing the rent"*. He wished he'd known that earlier.

The second thing he'd learned is that Sherlock had already interviewed more than twenty people on the phone, before meeting six of them face-to-face- and rejected them all as "too tedious for words." He hadn't known that fact. It made him wonder why he'd passed muster. He'd always assumed when Sherlock shouted to Mrs Hudson that he would take the flat that it was just because Sherlock couldn't find anyone else mad enough to consider it.

The value of an eidetic memory for this exercise became obvious, as Sherlock recounted word for word their exchange in the lab.

Mary started giggling when Sherlock started talking about John's "brother". He shushed her, saying that he was glad Sherlock was willing to be honest enough to admit that he'd got the gender of his sibling wrong.

The recording resumed. "Now I am supposed to explain- no, _express_\- my emotions about our first meeting. That's actually quite easy. I was relieved. Immensely. Getting a suitable flatmate meant I could move into Baker Street, and that was the condition imposed on me by Mycroft before I could resume my work with Lestrade. You were the first candidate I had met who was conceivable as a flatmate. You were not boring, not tedious, and quite interesting compared with the idiots I had already met and rejected. That initial deduction proved to be true over the course of your tenancy. In hindsight, I should have thanked Mike Stamford for making the connection and the introduction."

John found himself recalling his own version of their first meeting, the one he'd recorded and given to Diane Goodliffe. He hadn't followed instructions exactly, just hit the record button and started talking, mixing in what he felt with the facts. The idea of separating them? Well, it just didn't work; not for him. He'd always felt too self-conscious when therapists tried to get him to play these little games.

Back at their own flat, Mary had made him record his version yesterday. She kept prompting him to do it all afternoon, and he kept procrastinating. He wanted to see Sherlock. Yes, of course, he did. But, the idea of having to put into words what he thought about the first time he met him, and then when he re-appeared at the restaurant- well, it was a huge obstacle. And how on earth was he going to choose another "significant event" between him and Sherlock to talk about? The most obvious one- what happened at St Barts when Sherlock jumped- was like an open wound. He just _couldn't_ choose that one.

Finally, Mary just forced him to sit on the sofa, gave him a cup of tea, told him to turn on his phone to record and just said, "Talk to me, John. Forget about the phone. Just tell me what happened the first time you met Sherlock. I want to know."

So, he had**. At the end of it, Mary eyes were alight and her smile was broad. "Yeah, Mike Stamford was right. He is just like that. And I'm not surprised you were hooked. I would be, too."

oOo

Now the two of them were sitting in Hartswood Manor about to listen to the second of Sherlock's recordings, and John kept wondering whether his second one would pass muster when Sherlock returned the favour. All the way down to Reigate, he'd been thinking and rethinking about his three recordings. He had no fears about the first one- their original first meeting. He felt comfortable about that one. As he knew the therapist must have planned it that way. In that situation, everyone- Sherlock included- had come through the first contact to form a positive relationship. He did wonder about what Mycroft's would say, but Diane had made it clear that someone else's recordings were strictly private, between that person and Sherlock.

He worried about making his recordings in a different order- he'd decided to do the reunion as his second entry. Would Sherlock be prepared to hear about John's reaction to his return? Should he have stuck to the proper order, and let his selection of the pool incident as the middle exercise lay the groundwork? Or was it right to get the apology out on the table first? He fretted as the train full of people going home for the Christmas holidays had climbed up the North Downs before dropping into Reigate. Despite being the one with the crutch, he'd insisted on putting Mary in the one empty seat in the carriage, and stood the whole way, squeezed in with the other shoppers, commuters and holiday travellers heading south. When he was stationary like this, his leg didn't bother him. But, Mary must have sensed his disquiet and kept patting his hand in reassurance. He had come to love her optimism, even if he didn't share it.

She insisted that they take a break for a cup of tea before listening to Sherlock's second recording. While he watched her prepare the tea in the modern kitchen that felt so incongruous in the otherwise Jacobean house, she kept the conversation going. "Are you still fretting about changing the order of your entries?"

He nodded.

She gave him a reassuring smile. "It's better to get it done- out on the table; we both know it's important."

As if that made it any easier.

By yesterday evening, he'd worked his courage up to the point of trying to record his second entry. He'd been so _angry_ that night when Sherlock returned_._ John knew he had a temper, and it was as if Sherlock had hit every single hot button on purpose, just driving him right over the brink. He did that, the idiot. When they'd lived together, John had got used to it, found ways to build a little time-out into their routines. His "getting some air" became short-hand for "You're being a wanker right now and I can't deal with this any longer before I lose my temper."

But, that night, in the shock of Sherlock's sudden reappearance, there was nowhere to run -and he'd already been keyed up all day, in nervous anxiety about what Mary would say to his proposal. What happened if she said no? He'd been scared of the consequences of that- of being abandoned, rejected again just as he finally got up the courage to commit to someone, to lay himself open and vulnerable. He was so on edge that when he'd finally realised that the annoying waiter with the fake French accent was actually an annoying git that he knew very well- it was just too much. A red haze had descended.

She handed him the tea. "If it's bothering you so much, just listen to it again. If you don't like it, then pull it. Sherlock isn't back yet; I'm sure Diane would let you change it." She pulled out her phone, swiped it a few times and then set it down on the countertop next to the teapot.

"This is about the first time we saw each other after you returned from the dead."

John couldn't help but hear the emphasis he had put on the last phrase, and worried. He hated listening his own recorded voice, but he forced himself to listen.

"I'm taking things out of order because you need to know something. And, sorry, I know that I'm not following the blasted _describe _and _express_ routine, but that's just not working for me."

There was the sound of him drawing breath. "I need to say I'm sorry – for how I reacted that night. I was so angry, and I lost my temper. You deserve an explanation. Whatever it might have seemed to you at the time, I really was glad to know you were alive. I just couldn't get past the thought that you'd _lied_ to me. All I could think of was that I'd been made a fool of- and in front of Mary, just as I was about to propose to her."

There was a half stifled laugh. "I always said you had atrocious timing…"

"You see, Sherlock, for the previous six months, I'd been telling her about you- how smart you were, how _brilliant_ things had been together, and how much I missed you. Then you waltz in and tell me that it was all an elaborate hoax and I was just a hapless stooge in your great game against Moriarty. It made me feel… so small, so useless. I was embarrassed. And all that emotion I'd spent grieving for you just flipped over into anger that you'd made me look so stupid."

"Yeah, I know. I was thinking all about me. Sorry about that. Now that I've had time to properly think about it, I realise that you were right- I am an idiot." The recording caught him chuckling ruefully. "But then you always said I was, so this is me agreeing with you."

"I'm not going to re-hash the facts of what happened that might- I know your memory is better than any damn video recording. What you don't know is what I felt. So, I'm telling you now. At the time, I was angry. And relieved, too. But, at such a…I don't know what to call it except a _primitive_ level. Deep down, instinctive, not rational at all… I was livid at you for leaving me behind. Of being shut out, of you thinking of me as being…I suppose the word is _unworthy_ of being told what you were doing and why you were doing it. And realising that _hurt._"

John took a deep breath, looking down at his tea, still startled by that revelation.

"Yeah, me- Mister Teflon. Jeez, Sherlock, over the years you've insulted nearly everything about me- from the speed of my typing to my mundane taste in television, and I never gave a damn, because I thought we connected better than that. All that huff and puff of yours was just…I don't know, maybe 'smokescreen' is the best way to describe it. You would shout at me, and I figured it was therapeutic for you. I'd shout back at you for leaving bloody fingers in the microwave _again_, and let off steam. We didn't need to _talk_; it just worked. _We_ worked. Or so I thought, until you jumped off a bloody roof and didn't leave a forwarding address."

Mary had shot him a stern look at that comment, and his voice on the recording sounded a little amused. "Mary's reminding me to be nice. Okay, so here it is. I meant what I said- I forgive you. I understand now why you did it. Still don't give a damn _how_, though. Kind of irrelevant, and rehearsing that bit is just going to make me feel stupid for not being able to see it as the magic trick it was. So, I hope to God your version of this recording isn't going to be you crowing about the thirteen scenarios."

There was a brief pause. "So, basically, this is me asking you to forgive me, for being a plonker. I'm still angry. Only now it's not about being left behind. I'm angry at myself, that I may have ballsed this up so badly that you're not going to let me back in now that you're back. And I'm not talking about cases, damn you. You think that I'm some sort of adrenaline junkie who only hangs around you because I like to chase criminals. You said as much that night."

"I'm going to say this just once, and then we're done with it, alright? You know what I think about _touchy-feely_ stuff." There was an intake of breath. "I value _you._ All six feet of daft, irritating genius, every brilliant bloody bit of you, even the things that drive me and everyone else wild with annoyance. It's not the party tricks you use to impress other people, it's not about the Mind Palace. It's the whole package. You don't have to be or do anything _heroic_, damn you, for me to care. You were the most important person in my life."

"So, that's what's pissing me off now. You pushing me away, somehow thinking this distance is something I want? You're _wrong_. You once said to me that you always get something wrong; well, this is it. _You're wrong_.I would not be better off if you'd never come back. That's just so wrong it's laughable. So, stop punishing me for being an idiot and let's try to get this sorted. Please."

John reached over and switched the phone off. Then he sat back on the kitchen stool and looked out the window. The light was starting to fade. He wondered whether Sherlock was on his way back now to the Manor from his strategic retreat up Box Hill. _God knows what he will make of all this_.

"John." Mary's voice was soft, gentle. "Don't you dare have second thoughts and erase it. If that recording doesn't do the trick, he's the bigger idiot."

A faint smile appeared on John's lips, but his eyes were still sad.

She continued, "And if he doesn't forgive you, I'll talk him around, I promise."

* * *

**Author's Note: * **_Got My Eye on You, _Chapter 26 explains just why Lestrade and Mycroft conspired to make Sherlock take a flatmate for Baker Street.

******The recording of John's initial reaction to his first meeting with Sherlock is already amongst my stories. Check out _Ex Files_, Chapter 16 _Expect_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three: John (Part Two) **

* * *

"I'm taking liberties, changing the order of the exercises." The baritone on the recording sounded a little hesitant to John's practiced ear.

"But, they say it's better to know the final destination before the beginning of the journey. So, I will cover what happened at the restaurant when I first saw John again, seven weeks ago. If that causes any issues, just fast forward this to where the digital counter reads twenty four minutes and seven seconds, and you will reach my choice of an instance that John and I shared between our first meeting and the…um, reunion." He seemed to have hesitated before settling on that word.

"For that exercise, I've chosen our first meeting with James Moriarty, because it was, well…the beginning of the end. You choose the order in which you listen."

There was a pause, and Mary looked across the room at John. "I'd say that's quite a coincidence that you _both_ swapped the order, and you _both_ chose the same event as your second entry."

John puffed his cheeks out and looked up at the ornate Jacobean plaster work on the ceiling. "Not really. It was kind of turning point, for both of us."

After a pause, presumably to let John fast forward if he had wanted to, Sherlock's recording resumed. There was a slightly self-conscious clearing of throat. "So, when I returned to the UK at the end of October, Mycroft told me that you were no longer living at Baker Street. I had asked him to keep an eye on you while I was away. I was worried that if my cover was blown one of Moriarty's contingency plans would kick into effect, and you would be targeted. I had incentivised my brother to keep watch while I was away, telling him that it might be the easiest way of detecting that something had gone wrong on my mission- and it was one bit of surveillance that wouldn't get him into trouble for interfering."

This was a business voice of Sherlock- factual and to the point. "The file he passed me at the Diogenes Club had your location identified for that night- the Westmark restaurant. I decided that there was no time like the present to bring you up to speed. I didn't want my return to become public knowledge, but neither could I guarantee that someone might not recognise me. I wasn't about to skulk about London in disguise. So, that meant I needed to tell you as soon as possible, and it was best done 'in the flesh', so to speak, lest you believe that someone was trying an elaborate hoax."

Mary nodded. "Sensible."

John shot her a warning look.

"Well, it was. Really, John, you wouldn't have wanted to read about it in the newspapers, would you?"

He focused on the recording.

"I decided to make it a public venue rather than your flat, because I thought it might…" There was the slightest of hesitations, but noticeable to both John and Mary, "…introduce some restraint in your reaction. Your natural reluctance to 'cause a scene' in a public place would make things…um, easier…for both of us. While you were still in a state of shock, I planned to tell you to keep the fact that I was back quiet for a while longer."

Mary sniggered. "I'd always wondered about that."

"I arrived at the restaurant, but as soon as I saw you sitting alone at the table, I could see that you were in a state of nervous anxiety, and that made me change my plans. I appropriated a few props so I could approach without alerting you to who I was. I needed to gain more data to see what was making you so anxious. Given your state of unease, an oblique approach seemed wise, giving you time to recognise me."

Mary started smirking.

"Unfortunately, you proved less than observant, John, and didn't realise who it was who handed you the wine list, despite my discrete attempts to draw your attention to my identity."

She giggled. "Oh lord, I wish I had seen that."

He glared at her. "Shut up. I'm listening." It was said without venom, and then he added, with a bit of irony. "At last, I'm going to actually listen to what he says, instead of losing my temper."

"I won't repeat the exchange of words. I certainly won't forget them. It was a mistake to go for the short version of 'Not dead', as my choice of words made you extremely angry. In my defence, I meant what I said; I was concerned that the shock might damage your heath. Your date, whom I now know as Mary Morstan, asked me whether I had any idea what I had done to you. She was angry and protective of you, which should have given you a clue about her eventual answer to the question you had intended to ask her. Really, John, even _you_ could have deduced her acceptance. Why you had worked yourself up into such a state, I don't know."

John saw Mary biting her lip to stop the laugh, and just growled "Don't."

"I didn't answer her because I didn't know. I had no idea what I had done to you. How could I? I'd been away for two years. I could see however, that you were becoming more distressed. Well, angry more than distressed. It was at that stage that I realised I had better apologise before you lost your temper. I'm not sure you actually heard me, because you went on to ask me how I could let you grieve for two years. I was trying to understand that exaggeration, as the initial shock of my death would have faded quite quickly. The file told me that you had clearly moved on within a matter of months, leaving Baker Street, getting a new job and were now about to become engaged. Perhaps it was part of the reason why you found it so hard to recognise me, despite my rather obvious clues- out of sight is out of mind. I tried to defuse the situation, but to no avail. As it turned out, I shouldn't have been concerned about the shock, as you quite quickly demonstrated your robust health by knocking me to the floor with your hands around my throat."

John breathed out, and then in again. Then he reached over and paused the recording, looking down at the floor.

"John? Are you alright?"

When he could look up again, he just said. "He thought I had _forgotten_, that I'd gotten over it quickly." Then he remembered their first night, and Rachel. He muttered, "But that was _ages_ ago, why would she still care? A bit not good, Sherlock." He shook his head.

"What?" Mary looked concerned. "Who's _she_?"

He smiled at her; "nothing…it's just something he once said; a case, he didn't understand that someone would still be distressed sixteen years after her daughter was stillborn."

"So, you're saying he didn't understand that you would be so upset by his suicide?"

"Apparently not." That shocked him. How had he let Sherlock think that? No matter what social deficits the man might have, he had thought that Sherlock knew how much he cared about him.

Mary pushed the button to play, and Sherlock's voice continued. "Understandably, the restaurant ejected the three of us, but only after I gave them my credit card to pay for the damage, and your bill. Out on the pavement, you refused to look at me, but Mary insisted on the three of us walking down the road to the Italian trattoria, which had a table available. "

There was an audible intake of breath on the recording. "Where round two of the fight commenced. I tried to explain more about how my death had been faked, but you weren't interested in the details. In fact, all you wanted to know was how many other people were involved in the rooftop escape. I began to sense that telling you who knew just re-fuelled your anger. As I discovered when you came across the table and punched me, splitting my lip."

"We were ejected from that restaurant, too. You attempted to hail a taxi to leave with Mary, but were unsuccessful in getting one to stop. That seemed to be a sore point with you, for some reason, as you turned and shouted at me that one thing you'd missed during my absence was my ability to get a cab driver to pay attention to you." There was a pause. "I was attempting to staunch the flow of blood, and offered no assistance- but really John, I didn't _want_ you to go. After a few more fruitless attempts by you being ignored by passing cabs, all three of us were getting cold, so Mary intervened again and steered us into the Turkish kebab house where round three began."

"There's no point in recounting the exact conversation. I repeated the error of saying things that were obviously inflammatory in some way, and it ended as the others had, with you resorting to physical violence."

There was a pause. "John, there is something you should know. While I was away, I learned how to defend myself against people who wanted to kill me. I was willing to let you hit me. It seemed to make you feel better, and I trusted that you did not want to inflict lasting damage. So, I just…didn't fight back. After the head butt, however, I finally realised that I had better stop talking…I threw in the towel, so to speak."

There were a number of odd clicks on the recording that made Mary sit up. "Ooh- he's recorded something, a couple of times, and then erased it." She stopped it, backed it up and replayed the clicks. "Three times."

"Sssh. Just listen." John wanted to know what he was going to say.

The baritone that resumed had a different timbre to it. "I'm supposed to say now what I felt. The simplest answer is 'confused.' And then…." There was a silence. "I just didn't know what to say. You were so _angry._ I didn't expect that. I was anxious about what you'd say. With hindsight, the French waiter routine was probably a bit…over the top and inappropriate. "

John rolled his eyes and muttered, "You could say that again."

Now it was Mary's turn to shush him.

"That made me embarrassed…uh, ashamed actually that I hadn't really thought through the mechanics of or meeting. After being so meticulous in the planning of everything I did over the past two years, I just…didn't this time. When I got to the restaurant, I realised that walking up to you and pulling out a chair and saying "Hi, John" wasn't really going to work." There was a silence. Then a huff. "Once I got there, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to say anything at all, and you'd…" There was a stutter, "…you'd tell me to piss off. Yes, you heard that right, me…_afraid._"

There was a deep breath. "So, I just…improvised." Another silence.

"John, you should have realised by now that when I get anxious I usually do something stupid. This was no exception. I have a bad habit. Well, Mycroft tells me it's a bad one… of trying to make a joke or say something funny…you know, to…to try to defuse the situation."

Mary looked at him with a question in her eyes, and John just rolled his eyes and nodded, before muttering, "One of his less endearing qualities."

As if Sherlock had heard the snide comment, he resumed now in a slightly defensive tone. "Using laughter to deal with stress and tension has a biological basis, all about the rhythmical audible contractions of the diaphragm and respiratory system as a way of responding to stimuli. It's called _gelotology_ and there is a large body of learned literature about the psychological and physiological effects of it."

John noted that as soon as Sherlock was on more familiar ground- the facts and scientific side of things, his fluency dramatically increased.

"You wouldn't be the first to accuse me of being childish, but before you do so, I can say in my defence that laughing is actually a complex brain process. The left side of the cortex of the forebrain has to analyse words needed to form the joke, before the frontal lobe takes over and anticipates the social emotional responses to the joke." There was the sound of a Sherlockian sniff on the recording. "According to Mycroft that's one area of my deficiency. Anyway, then the right hemisphere structures the concepts so people will 'get' the joke. Then the sensory processing area of the occipital lobe gets involved, and finally the motor responses are generated, and _voila-_ laughter results."

"Of course, understanding humour isn't the same as getting the joke. Mycroft told me that I don't always laugh at the _right_ places. I used to tell him that it's because I have a different sense of humour. But, uh…I guess the jokes I made about your moustache upset you and made you angry. It's just, well…it doesn't suit you, but I wasn't sure how to tell you that. That's probably why Mary was smart enough not to mention earlier the fact that she didn't like it either. She's much more socially adept than I am."

John rolled his eyes. "If he thinks that I gave him a bloody nose over his comment about facial hair, I really will kill him." Mary smirked.

There was another click. When Sherlock's voice resumed, it was more serious. "I realise that little diversion might be thought of as a form of avoidance. So, I will get to the point. I am sorry that I caused you so much distress by what I did- all of it, the plot, my inability to keep you away from having to witness it- I really did _try_ John, but your taxi managed to get back to Barts faster than the calculated average for the traffic situation at that time of day. And I meant what I said- once I was away, there were so many times when I wanted to tell you. But, I couldn't- not without jeopardising your survival and mine, too. And I botched telling you about my return. Completely. Well, what do you expect? It's at times like these that you should argue with anyone saying I am a 'high functioning' sociopath, as clearly, I still get too many things wrong to have earned that label."

"With the benefit of hindsight, I realise it was naïve of me to assume that things would not have changed with you when I got back. Perhaps I am guilty of wishful thinking. It seemed preferable to the alternative." He stopped. There was a long pause of silence, which lengthened.

John frowned. He felt like he was looking into the abyss. "Is that it?"

Mary glanced at the recorder. "Wait…there must be more. We aren't at the twenty four minutes and seven seconds yet. He's just trying to get up the nerve to say something."

"The alternative…." Sherlock stopped.

Another long pause.

"The most likely alternative was watching Moriarty kill you. Another alternative was taking you with me, and getting you killed along the way, which would have defeated the whole purpose. I'm not going to apologise for doing what I did to keep you alive and able to live a normal life. You can tell me to piss off now, and I will be glad that you are still alive and able to do just that. It's enough for me. And that's all I have to say about that." There was a click.

This time John did reach over and turn the device off.

"I need to think about that before going on to the last recording."

Silence fell. He felt Mary's eyes on him. He got up and stretched. "I'm going to take a walk. In the direction of Box Hill. You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course not." Mary watched him leave the living room, heard John's firm steps in the hall and then a few moments later, the kitchen door shutting behind him. The whole time of his exiting the Manor and for several minutes after that, she kept her eyes on the crutch that was still leaning up against the side of the sofa, where John had forgotten it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sherlock (Part One)**

* * *

**Author's notes**: *for those of you not realising it yet, the story is shifting between _Magpie: One for Sorrow_ and this- which covers the recordings used in the therapy. So, what Mycroft had to say that has provoked this from Sherlock is in _Magpie: One for Sorrow, Chapter Thirteen_. If you haven't read that yet, it would make sense to do so now.

* * *

He stabbed the record button on his phone with some ferocity. Sherlock had just listened to Mycroft pontificating on his version of events. Diane Goodliffe had made the recording last night in London*. What she didn't know is that he'd liberated her phone for a vital ten minutes, when she had left it in the kitchen – just long enough to transfer the file to his phone. He had heard her come in, and then disappear next door, probably to talk to Hayter and Cohen about him. He glared at the Skull. _I'm not paranoid._ She conceded the point, _balance of probabilities says you're right- this time._ He also knew that the surveillance his brother would have put on her phone would see nothing unusual - after all, the therapist would be doing that transfer of the file herself as soon as he sent her his own version. It was just a matter of timing.

It would not have occurred to Diane that he would steal it to listen before preparing his own. This was so not in her rule book. For a moment, he wondered if his brother would have deduced the likelihood of Sherlock taking a sneaky peak.

There was a snigger from the Ottoman box. It was sitting on the bedside table, keeping him company as he recorded his reply to Mycroft. Only after that would he tackle listening to John's recordings. _Pain before pleasure? _murmured the box. _You __are__ being a masochist today._

He was seething. Mycroft's patronising comment telling the therapist that she'd "earned a drink" still rang in his ears. That "interview" had been just one inflammatory statement after another, and he was well-fuelled with enough anger to see him through his recorded riposte.

"So, this is my version of the events, when you crossed my path nine weeks ago in Eastern Europe. First of all, let me set the record straight, _Brother_. There was no 'rescue'. I wasn't in need of your assistance then, and I'm not now."

He drew breath and tried to calm his voice. _No need to let him know how rattled you are._ His anxiety had more to do with his recent conversation with John on the way back to the house than it did with Mycroft.

_So, calm yourself._ The skull was being particularly intrusive at the moment. He snarled back at her- _Watch it now; you've got competition in the shape of an Ottoman Box._ He wasn't feeling in the mood for logic and reason; rage was feeling pretty good right now.

"Right, where was I?" He let the sarcasm drip from his words. "Oh, yes. I was shackled to the wall of a concrete cell, getting beaten up. Par for the course, brother mine, as you quite rightly commented. Occupational hazard and nothing I couldn't handle. In fact, if you had only stopped to deflate that monstrous ego of yours for one moment, you'd have realised that far from being some damsel in distress needing your help, I was in the middle of engineering my own escape when you gate-crashed and nearly caused the whole thing to go belly-up."

He took a sip of water, before resuming. "It had taken me three days to line up the young soldier who was standing guard outside. He was an idiot- didn't like the sound of someone being tortured so he hid inside his music. Andrija* was his name and he was about as far from his name-sake as possible. Most willing to take a bribe, however, which I promised him as soon as he got me out of the door. All I needed was access to his phone and I could wire the money. I'd already done it once- a gesture of good will to show him that I meant business. We'd rehearsed the whole thing, while his idiot superior was out spying on his wife."

"On the night in question, everything was going to plan. All I had to do was give BlagojeČubrilo the final bit of information and he'd disappear off to murder the coffin maker who was sleeping with his wife. Just as I got to the point, a spanner arrived in the shape of a third party to get stuck into my works and cause problems. I couldn't see who, because I was inconveniently shackled facing away from the door. But I could tell from Blagoje's new enthusiasm to beat me that it must be some big-wig he was trying to impress. But I wasn't worried. From the sound of his boots on the stone floor, and the thud of ample flesh into the chair in the corner, it was someone who was able to indulge his appetite to eat more than the common foot soldier. So, as long as Andrija didn't panic, between the two of us we'd be able to overcome this new person. In fact, I thought it might help my escape. We could strip his uniform off and hang him up to stand in for me. But, of course, the uniform would be miles too big for me."

He hoped his barbs struck home a bit. In his absence, Mycroft had gained weight. _Comfort eating? How very predictable._ He smirked; the comment came this time from the Ottoman Box rather than the Skull- it spoke of another kind of addiction, this one an issue for his brother rather than his own particular indulgence.

"It was unfortunate that the interrogator decided to target my throat; meant I had some trouble getting him to listen to my final comments. And it slowed things up, too, because the idiot then decided to tell our mystery guest everything I was saying. It was like a pantomime being conducted for the benefit of an audience of one. While I was in the middle of laying the last bit of the trap, this intruder spoke to ask a stupid question. 'Well? What did he say?'" He laid on a thick fake Slavic accent.

"If you could have got up off your fat ass to come closer you'd have heard what I said. It took me a few moments to decide that you were actually real and not some figment of my pained imagination. The second time you spoke in that ridiculous Barajevan accent, I realised it really was you."

He sniffed. "I let you do the rest of it. Well, given you'd come all that way, it was the least I could do to let you have your fun- getting the guard in, making him carry me upstairs. I was just sorry that I didn't get a chance to pay him his bribe. Did it never occur to you that he was rather easy to force into helping you? No, of course not; you think you are invincibly clever and just so good at espionage that he folded to your superior intellect."

"That's you, all over- making assumptions without considering the facts. So, you should admit the truth, brother mine. I didn't need you to rescue me. In fact, the reverse was true. You needed me to rescue you. All the king's horses and all the king's men, including you, hadn't been able to figure out the underground terrorist plot. You _used_ that failure of yours as an opportunity to suborn my agreement with Elizabeth. Talk about desperate measures. I was back scarcely a week and I cracked it. You really _are_ slipping, Mycroft."

He drew breath. "And another thing I need to set straight. This idea of yours that you are 'the most significant person in my life.' You might like to think so; I know it's a lie. _You_? You're the _absence_ in my life. The one who left- first you ran off to prep, then school, then university, then overseas- anything to get you as far away as possible from me. After mummy died, you abandoned me. Oh, I know what's coming next; you'll trot out that you 'rescued' me from the clinic and negotiated with father so he could ignore me officially, just as he had for years. _You, _significant? Hah- for the next decade I saw the Parham gamekeeper more than I did you, Mycroft. Mind you, he was a better person – he never judged me. That's your speciality."

"And as for 'brotherly love'…" he pumped that phrase with every ounce of scorn he could, "… 'risible' doesn't come anywhere near what I think of your abuse of the term. I've never seen anything from you except someone who thinks he can dictate to me, control me, and criticise me. If this is love, then it confirms what I've always thought. Love is the most vicious of motivators, an incredibly destructive emotion. I've spent a good part of my life believing I was stupid, because you were so quick to point out my errors as I was growing up; no one could ever meet your standards. When I was little, I didn't know any better, and thought you were right."

"You've imprisoned me more times than any Eastern European, just dressing rehab up by saying it's 'for my own good.' And when I finally manage to get out from under your big fat thumb, and you still persist in saying I can't cope without you. You've finally gone too far- this microchip in my back? I'm not a dog that strays, Mycroft. You don't own me. You have no right…"

He was almost speechless, choked with rage.

"You suggest that you know me, you can 'deduce my every thought' just by looking at me. And then in the next breath you say I can still surprise you. Which one is it, Mycroft? While you're listening to this, I can predict the smug 'I told you so' look on your face. I'm being way too emotional for your taste, aren't I? Losing control, not like you- calm, detached, so above all that. Well, I'm not you." He nearly shouted the last sentence.

"You've finally turned into father; he always said you would." He knew that his ragged breathing was probably going to show up on the recording. He didn't care.

Lowering his voice but making sure the venom was still there, he continued, "And you had the _nerve _to tell Diane Goodliffe that you were 'angry' at having to come rescue me. She might have believed you, but I know better. What really made you angry was the fact that I wasn't dead yet, to prove your assessment right all along. You were angry that you couldn't solve the underground plot on your own, that you had to call on your _little_ brother to come help you out. You were angry that you had to actually do some fieldwork for the first time in years. You were angry because I managed to solve Moriarty's death and the destruction of his network, _without your help._ That's why you actually enjoyed sitting there watching me get beaten to a pulp."

The Ottoman Box was sniggering now. _You're really losing your rag, aren't you? Be careful, next thing he'll be asking one of those doctors in the house to prescribe something to calm you down. Let me help with something you'd prefer._

Sherlock made a conscious effort to breathe deeply through his nose and hold it for a count of four.

"Right." He was calmness personified. "I appreciate Miss Goodliffe's approach to sharing perspectives, seems a sensible way to start if anyone else is even remotely interested in helping me once I leave here. But, the idea that I would include _you_ in that circle of people? Well, as you recently said to me, "friends" are not your area. So I have no qualms about cheating, and listening to your recording before I did mine. I'm _so_ glad I did. Merry Christmas, Mycroft."

He ended the recording, saved the file, and then attached it to an email:

**To: Diane Goodliffe**

**From: Sherlock Holmes**

**Send this file to Mycroft first, then send me his version, and only then read mine. I'm listening to John's recordings now, so don't interrupt.**

**Regards, **

**SH**

* * *

**Author's notes: *** "Andrija" means "Warrior" in Serbian. "Blagoje" means "Gentle"- these are real first names in Serbia.


	5. Chapter 5

**Ex Files**

**Chapter Five: Mycroft (Part One)**

* * *

The log fire crackled and brought a smile of gratitude for its warmth. Lady Caroline's drive from Wilton had been long, but now she could relax in the embrace of Mycroft's private rooms at Parham. Traffic on the A30 and then the A272 had been slow; the roads in both directions clogged with people dashing off to do last minute shopping. Some cars were probably on their way to the family Christmas, driven no doubt by an army of well-organised _no-last-minute-rush_ women. Still, that route was infinitely preferable to the nose-to-tail parking lot called the M25 and M27.

She'd not minded it really; the go slow pace meant she could enjoy using the hands-free mobile to talk on the phone with Ara. Her daughter had only arrived at Heathrow this morning, and she wanted to catch up on the news of her life in New York. The only irritation was the drop out of signal that kept interrupting things around Petworth.

"How is Ara?"

She smirked; "was I being that obvious?" There was a tease in that question.

Mycroft smiled. "Yes. There is a certain look you get when you are thinking of her."

"You'll be able to see for yourself tomorrow; she's due in Pullborough on the eleven twenty three train. She's agreed to spend the holiday with us – at least until Boxing Day evening, when I expect the siren call of her friends in London will take her away again. She's celebrating New Year's Eve with quite a few of her Uni friends, no doubt regaling them with stories of how much better it was last year in Times Square."

"She's rather taken with New York, isn't she?"

"Hmm- I sometimes wonder if that is because she enjoys having three and half thousand miles of water between us."

"Nonsense. She's past that teenage _I-hate-everyone_ business." No sooner had he said that when she saw a shadow pass over his face, almost too quick for her to notice. But she did, and knew instinctively what had caused it. "Have you decided what you will tell her about Sherlock?"

He shook his head. "No, because I don't actually know myself. The reports I am getting are second hand and rather uninformed. This new therapist of his is using a distancing technique- making him exchange recordings before meeting in person. She's supposed to be sending me one from him tonight, before I see him tomorrow morning. I should be back in time to have lunch with both of you, however."

"Don't – please. Spend the time with him. He needs that."

Mycroft shook his head. "He won't see it that way- would prefer, no doubt, to have an ocean between us."

"That doesn't matter. What he wants and what he needs are two different things. And, _you_ need to see him."

There was a sigh. "Do I?" A little pained smile formed for a moment, and then vanished.

He was saved from any further explanation of that evasive statement by a discrete knock and then the arrival of Mrs Walters.

"Dinner is ready, M'lord. Because Lady Caroline is here, I won't have you indulging your bachelor tastes. I've put you in the proper dining room."

The housekeeper had aged, but the extra years just seemed to strip away the unnecessary accoutrements of middle age. She must have been in her late seventies, but there was no diminution of energy or drive. She was not stooped, but straight as a ramrod- a posture born of determination and pride that no amount of arthritis would ever dare to challenge.

Caroline had once suggested to Mycroft that he might think about raising the idea of retirement with her, and his face paled and his eyes had widened with shock. "It would kill her. No, I could never be brave enough to suggest such a thing."

They had a relaxed supper, and spoke of other things. They never lacked for topics of conversation- from domestic politics or international relations, where she would defer to him or on the latest art and music on in London, where he would defer to her. Between them there was also their shared interest in estate management. Even so, she could tell it was still there. His mind had always amazed Caroline for being able to compartmentalise, to keep so many things going all at once without any outward evidence of any inner turmoil. But, over the years she had come to know anyway when one of those thoughts was not being obedient, when it kept rising to the top and needed to be forced back down. Sherlock was usually the one behind those thoughts these last weeks.

They were back in front of the fire, enjoying a postprandial brandy when his phone buzzed in his tweed jacket pocket. He fished it out and lifted his chin and then held the phone a little further away. She thought she might suggest he get his eyes checked. All that computer work of his would be starting to take a toll.

He sniffed. "It's the therapist. This is the recording that she promised- Sherlock's views on our reunion after his disappearance."

Caroline remembered the night that she had spent at South Eaton Place, when Mycroft showed her that Sherlock was still alive, returning from the dead*. She had always wondered what their conversation must have been when Mycroft rescued him from…wherever it was. He had never told her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the realisation that Mycroft was still looking at the screen, hesitating. "Oh, I'm sorry- do you want to listen in private? I'll go upstairs and get myself unpacked." She started to get up.

"Don't you dare." It was lightly said, but she could hear the real stress behind it. _Why is he dreading this?_ He continued, "I will need a little moral support, I think." He gave her a rather pained look. "Safety in numbers and all that."

She raised a quizzical eyebrow, but kept her seat as he pulled a small side table to the space between them, and put his phone down on it. Then he swiped the screen twice.

Sherlock's baritone began, "So, this is my version of the events, when you crossed my path nine weeks ago in Eastern Europe. First of all, let me set the record straight, _Brother_. There was no 'rescue'. I wasn't in need of your assistance then, and I'm not now…"*

Caroline listened in growing horror at Sherlock's vitriol as it poured out over the next eight minutes. The tone of voice was pure acid, a corrosive commentary that was designed to strip away any pretence of fraternal affection.

She took a quick look at Mycroft to see what effect this tirade was having. He was looking into the flames, watching the fire consume the seasoned wood as he listened. For once, he was not hiding behind a fixed facial expression that gave nothing away to the outside world. There was pain; she expected that, but the sadness was even harder for her to witness.

"…So I have no qualms about cheating, and listening to your recording before I did mine. I'm _so_ glad I did. Merry Christmas, Mycroft."

The recording stopped. Mycroft raised his eyebrow at his phone, and then reached over and switched it off. Then he rose in one smooth movement and walked over to the window with his brandy glass. He pulled aside the heavy brocade curtain from the leaded glass window and looked out. In daylight from here, she knew he would be able to see the manicured lawns of the west side of the house.

She got up to follow, standing beside and slightly behind him. Then she put her left hand onto his right shoulder- a gesture of consolation. "I am so sorry, Mycroft. That must be hard to bear."

"Don't trouble yourself, my dear. It's nothing new. I am the _arch enemy_, and hatred has always been the easier emotion for him."

"No, that's not hatred. If he didn't love you, he wouldn't be so angry. He's angry because he's in pain." Caroline remembered something and made a decision. "Wait here. There is something I brought with me; it's in my case upstairs. I won't be a moment."

Her words about anger raised a ghostly echo in his mind. Mycroft headed back to his chair by the fire, and remembered the first time he heard them.

oOo

He'd waited outside her door for a moment before going into her bedroom, trying to get his distress under control. _Calm yourself!_ This was so what she did not need right now. But the argument he'd just had with his nearly ten year old brother had been loud enough to be heard on the floor below, so it was likely Mummy knew without even having to admit it to her.

It was Christmas Eve. He'd come home as soon as the Michaelmas term ended on the 5th, because she wouldn't allow him to come home any earlier. Her one concession that horrible day in November when she told him she was dying of pancreatic cancer over lunch at the hotel had been her agreement to a daily telephone call. By the third call, he knew she was rationing that conversation to no more than forty minutes- but he wasn't sure whether that was for her sake or his. In either case, the early talks were something of an ordeal, until they found a way to talk sensibly about her impending death. He learned in those weeks how to read her deteriorating state of health and her pain levels just from her voice. And he'd spent a lot of time with Sherlock, trying to keep him occupied. On his mother's instructions, he kept the truth from his brother, and did not try to explain why Sherlock's comment, "Mummy's being boring", was not something she needed to hear.

For the past three weeks, now face-to-face with his mother, Mycroft could no longer pretend- there would be no remission; the ravages of the cancer were plain to see. There was a renewed sense of urgency that overcame her tiredness. She'd send the nurse away and spent her times alone with him going over what needed to be done with the estate. "I'm sorry, Mycroft- a sort of crash course in the burdens that are coming your way; I had hoped to have more time to explain all of this once you'd had a chance to enjoy your university years."

He had just nodded. "Needs must, Mummy. But, with one caveat- you mustn't tire yourself out. I'm sure I'll be able to pick up what I need to…later." It had felt so awkward and horrible to say that word when they both knew that it meant after her death.

This time, as soon as she saw him walk in, her face fell.

"So, he's figured it out then?"

Mycroft nodded. "I'm sorry, Mummy; I tried. But, he's too observant. And when he blurted it out over lunch, Father just said that he was stupid for not realising it before now."

"What did your father say, exactly?"

He shifted a bit, wondering whether he should lie to spare her.

"The truth, young man." Mummy was still able to read him easily.

He said, "Of course she's _dying_, you moron. Looking after you has worn her out." The bitterness of his father's words had shocked him. Sherlock had just got up and run from the room.

His father had thrown his napkin down in disgust. "Go after him, Mycroft. Make sure he doesn't go in and bother her."

As he recited this, she closed her eyes; he thought the pain was probably not the cancer this time, but something worse.

When she drew breath, and opened her eyes, Violet patted the bed beside her. "Come sit here, Mycroft; it's time to have this conversation. I've been procrastinating long enough."

She looked close to tears; if so, then they would be the first she had shed in front of him since he'd been home.

"As horrible as this is for you, and for your father, I am not afraid for you both. You are fortunate in that you take after him. There is calmness in you, a rationality and determination that you both share." She looked wistful. "You need to understand that those are good traits to have. I know that his infidelity has distressed you. More you than me, to be honest. I always assumed it would happen. And I have not stopped loving him because of it. That's something you will learn. Love is unconditional. That's why it hurts so much when things go wrong. And they have gone wrong between him and me. There are _lots_ of reasons for that, and they are not all his fault. I want you to remember that."

"I know you love him; that's why I felt he had betrayed you."

"Don't. Please don't hate your father; not for that. There are many things that we've done to each other over the years, but I will never forget the fact that he loved me when no one else would. And I loved him for it. I still do."

That comment shocked him, and his confusion must have shown.

"I am no angel, Mycroft, and there are many things I would have done differently if I could live my life over again. I haven't always made the right choices. But, there is one thing I don't regret at all about your father. He gave me two wonderful children, and for that alone, I owe him all the love I have." Sadness was now there alongside the physical pain in her voice. Without being asked, he poured a fresh glass of water from the carafe on the bedside table and handed it to her. He tried to ignore the serried ranks of prescription drug bottles on the table.

After a swallow, she gave the glass back to him. "It's going to be hard for you both- what happens next. After the funeral, you must return to Oxford. Throw yourself in and just get on with it. I wish I could be there to enjoy it with you, but when you do miss me, just remember this- I've always known that you will succeed. I _know_ you in a way that no one else does. You are the best of me, and you will do me proud. I have no doubts at all about that." He seized on the smile she gave him, storing it away as something he would take out from time to time, to cherish.

By now Mycroft was struggling to keep his own tears from escaping. He tried to breathe through his nose, and dug the fingernails of his right hand into the fleshy part of his palm. The pain kept him grounded. _She needs to say these things; I mustn't add to her worries._

"Your father won't deal with my death well. He will be angry. If that makes him run off to the London townhouse, or disappear on more overseas business, just let him. It's better than the alternative. If he stays here, I am afraid that he may take his anger out on Sherlock."

His eyes widened. Mycroft had always known that his father did not deal with Sherlock well, but he'd not thought it was this bad.

She nodded. "Yes, since you've been away, things have deteriorated. I've tried to protect him from… that disappointment, but without me here, I worry about Sherlock. He will miss me in a way that neither you nor your father will understand. I fear he will take it out on you. "

"I'm don't understand."

She drew a shallow breath and said in a faux stern tone. "I'm not that far gone, Mycroft. The argument you've just had. It's because Sherlock told you in no uncertain terms that you had to 'fix' me, and you tried to explain to him why you couldn't."

As ever, she'd nailed in one. Sherlock's outraged reaction to his explanation, followed by the accusation that he was "just like Father; you _want_ her to die." That had cut through him like a knife and made him snap. He snarled back that Sherlock had to "grow up and stop being stupid. I love mummy just as much if not a whole lot _more_ than you do. If I could die in her place, I would. But, it doesn't work that way. People die from cancer all the time, and no matter how much either of us might want it to be otherwise, there isn't going to be a happy ever after ending."

He couldn't dare tell her this. When Sherlock had just wailed and then smacked him as hard as a ten year old could, Mycroft had felt ashamed. Still wailing, Sherlock had then fled upstairs.

She patted his hand. "You need to understand things from his point of view. You are his elder brother. You are the perfect one; the one your father loves…so obviously. You can fix anything and you know _everything_." She gave a sad smile. "If I had a pound for every question he's asked of you, and you've answered, we wouldn't need to worry about the cost of refurbishing the clock tower. All little brothers look up to their older brothers, but in his case, you are the only other person he has ever loved, apart from me. He loves you with a ferocity that sometimes scares me. When you left for Eton, I thought he was going to die of a broken heart."

"Father said he just had temper tantrums."

She snorted. "What does Richard know about what Sherlock feels? Your brother has more empathy in his little finger than your father does in his whole body; he just can't express it. He's angry because he's in pain. Both physical and emotional pain. And he doesn't know how to let it out, so the frustration makes it come out as anger. You're just in the way- a bit like a lightning rod. You have to learn to look past it, Mycroft."

"I fear it will get worse as he gets older. And I won't be there to help him." Her voice cracked at that point, and she had to stop for a moment.

When she could resume, it was to whisper, "I am so _afraid_ for him. Even if he gets through this, the experts tell me that adolescence is terrible for people like Sherlock. And the inability to explain what he is feeling is the reason why nearly half of adults who have his condition will consider suicide at some point. It's the way he is- he can't express things, emotions. They scare him, make him terrified, and that makes him even angrier. The pressure just builds up to the point where he goes into meltdown. It's very, very hard to remember that fact when he is at full throttle, but the thing that starts it off? It's almost always that he wants…no, he _needs_ to be loved but doesn't know how to be lovable."

Now she was crying, and he was losing the battle to hold onto his own. "When I am gone, you will be _everything_ to him. And that is a horrible burden. I know that. It isn't fair. Your father will point out that to you endlessly and tell you to ignore Sherlock and get on with your life. Just find ways to connect with him, spend time with him, on weekends, in the vacs. You will be his lifeline."

She was struggling to get the words out, but kept going. "I'm only going to ask one thing of you. I don't care if you decide that all this…" she waved a hand almost dismissively at the room "…is not for you. Renounce the title, give the money away to charity, and let the whole damned thing go; I _don't care._ Just promise me that you will not hate your brother, that you will give him the love that he has to have to survive."

He had promised her.

oOo

Behind him, the door opened and Caroline returned. He had poured them both another finger of brandy and left it on the little table between the two chairs. As she sat down in chair, he could see she was wrestling with wrapping paper, trying to remove the tape to slide out a book.

"It's not for you, actually. I bought it for Ara. She used Susan Sontag's book On Photography for her dissertation and kept reading bits of it to me. But there is a quote in here that you need to hear." She started leafing through the pages.

Mycroft could see the title of the book- Reborn: Journals &amp; Notebooks, 1947-1963.

"Ah, here it is. The section is titled 'Flayed', and this is what it says. '_It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.'_

He sniffed. "I won't be repeating _that_ quote when I see him tomorrow- might give him too many ideas." He rolled his eyes in mock horror, and took a sip of his brandy "Re-wrap the book. Ara is young enough to need that kind of advice. Anyway, I'm more sympathetic to Oscar Wilde who said "The heart was made to be broken."

Caroline smiled. "I prefer Wilde's other comment- _To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love_. And, who knows about Sherlock? Maybe, someday, he will surprise even you on that score."

* * *

**Author's Notes**: * to hear Sherlock's recording, go to _Express- An Ex Files Special_, Chapter Four. The night Caroline learned about Sherlock's return is covered in _Ex Files- Extenuate_


	6. Chapter 6

**Express- An Ex Files Special**

**Chapter Six John (Part Three) **

* * *

"Take this; you're half frozen."

Mary passed John a cup of tea, and slipped back onto the kitchen stool across from him. She'd known from the expression on his face that things had not gone as well as she had hoped they would.

"You found him?"

He nodded, his hands wrapped around the mug to help warm them up.

"And…?"

"I said what I wanted to say. Told him that if it wasn't clear on my recordings, I was making it clear now, and I did- told him in words of one syllable that he's not going to get away with pushing me aside. He told me to listen to the third tape before he'd go any further- and just walked away." He took a sip from the steaming cup. "Did you see him come in?"

She shook her head. "No, but by the sudden activity of his brother's people, I guessed he was back. They said he'd gone upstairs to his room."

"He said he was going to listen to my recordings." He took another sip. "I don't know if what I just did was the right thing to do, or the stupidest thing I've done since he got back."

She gave him a reassuring smile. "Look on the bright side. You've just met face to face and he hasn't had a flashback or a meltdown. That sounds like progress, after what happened in the hospital and at the gym."

That got a smile from John. "Thank you. You are a person who sees a half full glass, rather than a half empty one. Part of the reason why I love you."

She pulled a mock frown. "And there I was thinking it was because you thought I was sexy."

That got an even bigger smile. "Oh, that too, of course." Then he sniggered. "Only you don't want my cold hands trying to share some of your body heat right now."

"Don't you dare. We'll listen to that third recording now and let you thaw out."

She pulled the recorder onto the kitchen counter, checked that the digital counter was at twenty four minutes and hit the play button.

"This is my third entry, but taken out of order from the one suggested by Miss Goodliffe. For reasons that will become clear, she has been barred from listening to this entry. This covers the occasion I have chosen to explain the situation that exists between John Watson and myself."

She snorted. "Rather formal- sounds like a police statement."

"Shush."

"On the night we met again nine weeks ago, you asked me to stop telling you _how; _you wanted to know _why_. The explanation begins years ago, the very same night you moved into Baker Street. When the cabdriver was telling me about his serial suicide victims trying to talk me into taking the pill, he said I had "a fan"- someone who had incentivised him to kill randomly, in order to attract my attention."

Mary heard John gasp, and looked over in surprise.

"I know, I didn't tell you that at the time. Well, after all, we'd just met. And when _someone_ shot the man in the chest, while he lay dying I got a name out of him." There was a pause, then "Moriarty."

John closed his eyes. "Fucking bloody _hell_. I'd forgotten that; I asked him what was making him happy, and he said 'Moriarty'. I asked him what's that? thinking Moriarty was a what, not a who."

As if he had heard John's curse, Sherlock continued, "In my defence, John, at the time I didn't have the faintest idea who that was, so I didn't correct your misunderstanding. I didn't say anything about that to Mycroft either, although when he showed up at the crime scene, I was suspicious. You also need to know something else- remember General Chan? While I was in China, I did a little digging into the back history of the Black Lotus tong. Turns out, she was using Moriarty's services. Another link that we didn't know about. At the time, I was more concerned that you had been taken hostage and threatened, because they thought you were me. I decided it was a case of mistaken identity, and didn't think that you might have been targeted specifically."

"It wasn't until the bomb across the street from 221b that the penny dropped; someone was trying very hard to attract my attention. The fact that my brother showed up the next morning did make me wonder if there was some connection, but…I let it go. You know I hate speculating in the absence of data. Then the pink phone arrived, and I began to realise that someone had set a series of initiation tests. The balance of probabilities said this was Moriarty. By then, some of my own digging was beginning to get a profile. He's more Mycroft's cup of tea than mine- and that made me think. The Bruce Partington Plans? How _very_ awkward. Andrew West was dead and the plans were in the wind somewhere, but Mycroft was very interested in just who might want to purchase those plans. That someone, I later discovered, was Moriarty."

John groaned. Mary was getting concerned; "is this all news to you?"

"Yeah, talk about being kept in the dark."

"About now, you are getting seriously annoyed with me. All I can say is that _I didn't know either_. Mycroft was keeping me in the dark as much as you; and he was _using _us both. To be fair- and you know just how disinclined I am to be fair with my brother- it was probably sensible. He didn't expect me to be of interest to a man wanted by the police and intelligence services of 32 countries. And I know now that he had no idea about Moriarty being behind the serial suicides or the bombing campaign. To some extent, we were all fumbling around in the dark. The pieces only became clear to me much later, with the benefit of hindsight"

"The morning after the bomb in the block of flats, you and I quarrelled. You asked me why the bomber was doing what he was doing, and I answered that I thought he wanted to be distracted. The game itself had become amusing to him. And I found the whole process to be fascinating- as if someone had tailor-made a whole series of opportunities for me to show off what I could do. I mean, starting with Carl Powers- my very first case? Well, who could ignore such flattery? You took exception to my attitude, and got on your moral high horse, accusing me of not "caring" about the 'actual human lives at stake'."

There was an audible sniff on the recording. "I told you then that caring wouldn't solve this, or save lives, and my answer obviously disappointed you."

John's face told Mary that he could remember that conversation very well.

"There was another thing you said- meaning to be morally superior, no doubt- but it made me realise something important. You said, and I quote, 'I hope you will be very happy together.' If it hadn't been for that comment, it would've taken me quite a lot longer to realise that Moriarty was trying to recruit me, or at least use me to get at Mycroft."

"But, before I had a chance to think that through, the next call came through and we were off to solve the case of the missing banker- or another innocent victim would be killed. I was being incentivised, John, with those _actual _human lives you were on about, and saying 'no' wasn't exactly an option."

She could hear in his tone that John's criticism still stung a bit.

"After we solved the fake painting puzzle, you went off to try to find out what was going on with West's murder, while I went to Scotland Yard and the interrogation of Miss Wenceslas. It was there that she confessed that the person she had consulted about the forgery was Moriarty. Lestrade was focused on solving his case, and didn't think through the implications. Moriarty had just blown a £30 million job and been willing to turn in three of his own clients, not to mention killing the twelve people in the block of flats, just to put together this puzzle. There were clearly high stakes being played for here."

John groaned again. "Him and his bloody _games_."

Mary was confused. "Who? Moriarty or Sherlock?"

"Both."

Sherlock's baritone had continued during their exchange. "That made me angry. Moriarty was toying with me because he wanted to use me against Mycroft. He was certain that I was no real threat to him. He'd _handed_ these puzzles to me. He wanted to turn me into a weapon against my brother, and I was not about to let that happen. I convinced Lestrade to keep Moriarty's name out of the police database for twelve hours. It would give me a head start before someone leaked it to him."

"I then caught up with you on the train tracks, and we solved the West case, retrieving the memory stick with the plans on it, and turning the brother-in-law over to the police. Then I realised I had the means to draw Moriarty out into the open. If I turned the memory stick over to Mycroft, he'd want to know everything about what had happened, and I wasn't entirely sure I would be able to keep him unaware of Moriarty being behind the bombing campaign. If he found out, I know him- he'd shut me out of the whole thing, and probably lock me up in a cell somewhere, claiming it was for my own good. He does have a habit of over-reacting."

John yelled at the recorder, "Jesus, Sherlock! _Over-reacting_? When you've just picked a fight with the world's most dangerous criminal? I wonder why he might think that stopping you was a good idea?"

"…and I was hardly going to tell _you_ about it. You'd made it clear by then that you disapproved of my morals, and this was going to be risky. So, I went on my own. That way I hoped to keep both you and Mycroft out of the firing line."

John hit the pause button and glowered. "He lied. Sat there in his chair at Baker Street and lied through his teeth; said he'd returned the memory stick to Mycroft. I went off to a date under the assumption that it was all over. Of course, I didn't make it; some of Moriarty's men jumped me, drugged me and the next thing I know, I'm strapped into a vest of semtex just like the earlier four victims."

Mary's eyes were huge. "You've never told me that!"

"Classified."

"Then why am I listening?"

"You must have passed muster at some point; Mycroft is likely to have done a vetting as soon as Sherlock came back."

Mary knew the truth of that all too well. That Sherlock was telling all this to John said that he knew, too. She felt a frisson of fear, as John switched the recorder back on.

"So, we have arrived at the pool. The scene of the first crime I ever investigated. I was fourteen at the time, and as you know, I didn't solve it then. This time, I took the precaution of bringing your gun to the pool, because I had no idea what to expect. Best to be ready for anything, I thought. "

A deep intake of breath. "But I wasn't prepared for what happened when you stepped out of the changing room. For a moment, I thought _you_ were Moriarty, and that I'd been living with a criminal mastermind at Baker Street for the past year. But then you opened your jacket and revealed the bomb."

There was a pause, the first real gap in the flow of his statement.

"I realised that Moriarty had manoeuvred me into an impossible position. Whatever else was being said- and you will remember the exact words as well as I do- the real agenda was obvious. If I gave him the memory stick to free you, I would compromise Mycroft. If I didn't, he'd kill you. The two people I cared most about in the world, and he was making me choose."

John reached over and hit the pause button. He closed his eyes, and said quietly to her, "mmm. I'm…um, I need to think this through. Give me a minute." He got up and walked over to the kitchen sink, taking their mugs with him. He started to wash them out.

"Talk to me, John. What are you thinking?" Mary kept her tone light, burying her worries.

He was scrubbing the inside of the second mug when he answered. "I'm thinking that he's taken a long time to tell me this." He turned the tap on to rinse. "I wish I had known sooner."

John was drying the cups when he said to her, "Turn it back on. I need to hear the rest."

She did so, but there was a pause, as if Sherlock was hesitating. "Then you did that thing…that unexpected grab that meant the snipers trying to kill you would shoot Moriarty in the process. You shouted 'run', as if I could, or would. You are a good man, John Watson and I did not deserve that kind of sacrifice from you."

There was a silence and then the sound of a breath being taken and then slowly released. "I put you in harm's way. You were there, about to be killed, because I was too stupid to realise that Moriarty would have seen us, and known that his plan would work. I gave him the bloody memory stick. And it still wasn't enough; he just tossed it into the water and said he could get that anywhere. I'd just been played, John, to reveal that I was willing to betray Mycroft to save you. He may have said it to you, John, but I rather showed my hand, too."

"I've replayed that final scene thousands of times. I don't know if he would have taken the risk of being in the same room as an armed bomb. Those snipers were there for a reason. My bluff- to shoot the vest that I had torn off of you- could have been a total failure. I honestly had no idea if a bullet would have set it off- probably not, I have since learned- but I didn't know that at the time. But, if I shot him, then the snipers would kill you- and me as well."

Subdued now, Sherlock said quietly, "I was preparing to offer him a deal- I'd have agreed to go with him in exchange for letting you go. I think he would have taken that offer, and used me against Mycroft, but we'll never know because that phone call intervened."

There was a shaky breath and then he continued. "When I sent you back to Baker Street, I walked. I needed to think. But Mycroft must have been tipped off by my call to Lestade, and a car intercepted me and took me to the townhouse. That's when I asked him to put you in protective custody or a witness protection programme. And that's when he _finally_ told me more about Moriarty."

"I was so angry- and…well…um, worked up… that I decided his keeping me in the dark about Moriarty meant I would do the same to him. So, I didn't tell him about the cab driver, or much about our conversation with Moriarty."

"You know what happened next. I told you to leave Baker Street, and you refused, leaving me no option but to do so myself. I then contacted him and tried to see if he'd take the deal- me- but then Moran intervened and derailed everything- and I ended up in rehab. Mycroft was no doubt delighted that he'd side-lined me."

There was a click, as if Sherlock had turned off the recorder briefly to marshal his thoughts.

The recording resumed. "You need to understand that this incident at the pool didn't end there. Once out of Mycroft's idea of a jail, things appeared to be back to normal. You know how I tried to get Mycroft to work with me- but he kept trying to do things on his own, claiming it was to protect me. Irene Adler was part of Moriarty's plans, - did you figure that one out? Do I have to remind you? 'On the count of three, shoot Doctor Watson.'" He gave it the perfect American accent that the CIA man had used in Belgravia.

"Mycroft wouldn't allow me to tell you- and anyway, by then I was trying to put some distance between you and Moriarty, lest he decide to use you against me again. That whole business with Irene playing dead, her giving me the phone and the American beating up Mrs Hudson? It was…well, a close run thing. Through my own stupidity, I deduced the airline details without realising that she would pass them to Moriarty and he would use it. That nearly ended up destroying my brother's career. Luckily, Miss Adler's own weaknesses gave me the means to unlock the phone and extricate him from disgrace. He ended up with material that would justify his taking the risk. Of course, he didn't see it as such- and used it as an excuse to try to side line me completely thereafter from any further dealings with Moriarty."

"After that, I knew that if I didn't take matters in my own hands, Mycroft would end up losing if he tried to take on Moriarty himself, and you'd end up dead. So, I started plotting- the Sigurson Plan is what I called it. Took me nine months. Mycroft did not know about it for ages, and when he finally did find out about it, he didn't approve. Remember when he came to Baker Street after we got back from Dartmoor? That was when he realised I was going to do this, and he wouldn't be able to stop me. It was only at the very end that he was allowed to help with the thirteen scenarios to get me off the roof alive."

"So, I hope that explains not only what happened, but, more important, why. I tried to keep you as far away as possible, so you wouldn't be targeted. But Moriarty knew- and, well…you heard what he said on the roof. So, that is why I won't apologise for saving your life by what I did two years ago. All I can say is that you were willing to kill a man to save my life on the first night you moved into Baker Street. It…um, just took me longer to return the favour. And I didn't have to pull the trigger myself."

There was a pause.

"That's also the reason why now you need to stop being associated with me in any way. The person who put you into the bonfire is still out there. Mary, you need to convince him. I will not be responsible for your death. I…_can't_ let my weakness cost you your life. So this is my note. No, not _that_ kind of note, you idiot. I'm not about to jump off a roof or anything else like it. This is just goodbye, John. I am going to survive, and so are you. But it has to be apart."

The recording ended. John raised his grief-stricken eyes to Mary. "Oh, God. What am I going to do now?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

**Sherlock (Part Two)**

* * *

After listening to John's first recording, Sherlock turned the recorder off and walked over to the window. It was now dark and he pushed aside the curtains to open the window wide. Most houses were heated too much for his taste. He liked to be kept cool; too much warmth made him sleepy and sleep was not only dull- it was positively dangerous these days. Too many things slipped their chains at night, and prowled the corridors of his Mind Palace. He'd nailed an extra plank of wood across the double doors into his Mind Lab. He needed to stay awake and alert as he listened to these recordings.

He decided that he rather liked this therapist's approach. Goodliffe was happy to eliminate one aspect of communication that always troubled Sherlock- faces. The better he knew the person, the harder it was for him to read their expressions and decode what they were thinking. It was much easier with strangers, whose emotions were usually one dimensional, simply because they didn't know him. With those closer to him, there always seemed to be subtexts and other agendas at play. He had never realised that John thought he was always asking to be punched when he spoke to him, until he admitted as much before they went to see Irene Adler. John had dispensed with needing an invitation that night when he returned from being dead.

Recordings stripped out the visual and gave him a chance to deal with just the audio delivery and the words themselves. In John's case, he had thought that he wouldn't need more than the first few sentences to know what the rest of the recording would say.

But he was wrong, certainly about their first meeting. He'd been able to deduce so much about John, but along with the trivia, he'd realised something else. This person he'd just been introduced to by Mike Stamford was not only interesting, but he was also a person in his own right. Not content to be pushed around by Sherlock. He might be short in stature, but he wasn't _small_ by any stretch of imagination. And he would do well as a flatmate, able to satisfy Mycroft so Sherlock could get back to work with Lestrade.

As he listened to John's recounting of the meeting*, a smile kept coming to his face. Sherlock had been so focused on finding a flatmate, almost anyone who wasn't boring, that he had not cared a jot about what the other person was thinking of him. _I underestimated his deduction skills. _ He listened as John explained what he expected compared with what he saw in Sherlock. The comment about Molly made him smile, too. John always had a soft spot for her, and was more astute than Sherlock had given him credit for- "gauche as hell", he said. Well, Sherlock wasn't so stupid as to mention he was a sociopath _before_ John signed the lease.

At the time, he'd been so busy thinking about what he needed that he did not realise that the man he was meeting would become so important to him. He'd deduced everything he needed about John, except the most obvious thing- that he might someday become his one and only friend.

The second recording- about their reunion- was even easier to sum up. John was sorry; he was apologising for his reaction to Sherlock's return.

_As if that mattered._ Sherlock didn't need an apology. What happened in the past was no longer as important as the fact that when John was kidnapped and nearly burned alive on Guy Fawkes Night. The more John wanted to patch things up, the harder it would be for him to separate himself. And Sherlock didn't want him to be close; he needed John to be _safe_.

He breathed in the freezing night air, taking pleasure from the distraction. It reminded him of Tibet for a moment before his sense of smell fractionated the scents and spoke to him of softer climates, of damp rich earth, of a green and pleasant land, even when it was wearing its winter clothes. Tibet smelled of rock and ice, snow and stone. And animal dung burned as fuel in a world above tree line. The scent at Hartswood reminded him of Parham and his childhood, of midnight treks into the North Wood, when there was no one telling him what to do or how to behave.

He shut the window with some firmness. No time for sentiment. He had to hear John's version of the pool, and compare it with what he'd sent to the doctor. This was the part he was dreading.

Typical of a soldier, John marched straight in.

"I remembered your point about there being _five_ pips- but I thought it was safe enough to take a night off and go see Sarah. I figured you would call if another one came up. I should have known better; the real tip-off was when you actually volunteered to get milk. If that wasn't a clue you were lying through your teeth, I don't know what was."

John cleared his throat. "I'm not going to bore you with the details of my capture and being trussed up like one of the other hostages. Moriarty made an appearance and told me what was going to happen*. I was being used to get at you; I'd let myself become bait."

"Then you arrived and I had to say what was being said in the earpiece. I tried to make the delivery odd enough that you would realise what was going on- but at first you just stared at me like you'd seen a ghost. That's when I realised that he hadn't told you that I was the hostage this time. The look on your face when you thought I was Moriarty... so I opened the coat to show you the bomb."

"And then he decided I wasn't being a good enough proxy for him, so he showed up in person and I listened to you two flirting with each other. 'Consulting criminal' you called him. And that made me worry a lot, especially when you then complimented him with that 'Brilliant'. You scared me then. Up until that time I didn't think you might be tempted. And then he stroked your ego, too- and actually admitted it was a compliment. It was a bloody mutual admiration society."

"I wasn't sure what all that was going, until you finally said that you would _stop_ him. And then you asked if I was alright. No, Sherlock, I wasn't all right. Once I realised that you weren't joining him, I was sacred witless that he was going to kill you. And then you dangled the bloody memory stick in front of him, I realised that you were about to add treason to your list of misdemeanours. So, I jumped him and told you to run."

There was a pause, after which he continued a little more calmly. "I was already committed to the attack when he just chucked the stick into the pool. I didn't get that. And then the moment was lost, because the sniper targeted you and I had to step away."

"Then he said he was going to kill you if you didn't stop interfering. As if that wasn't adding incentive with you, I knew you'd just keep at it until you 'won', whatever the hell that would actually mean. The guy was insane, and yet you were talking with him as if he were normal. It was just…" there was a quick breath, "…bizarre. He said he'd burn the heart out of you, and you just bragged that you didn't have one."

"He seemed to know better than you do that wasn't quite true. Then he did his disappearing act, only to pop up again like some demented jack –in-the-box."

"Your brother once said to me that I had 'trust issues'. He's got a point, you know. But there I was- trusting you completely. That moment at the pool, I realised how wrong Mycroft was. I was sitting on the floor, not a blind thing I could do, with sniper lasers lighting me up like a bloody Christmas tree. I'm the one who can shoot a gun; you were the one who missed the Golem. I should have been terrified. Yet, when it came to it, I knew you'd do the right thing and that somehow, you'd sort it. It was the weirdest thing. I'd never felt more _alive_ than at that moment."

Then he laughed. "That bloody phone. Talk about surreal…_Staying Alive_? I mean, really, it was a ring tone that some bad TV scriptwriter would have used." He drew breath, but Sherlock could hear the smile that was on John's face as he recounted his version.

In a more serious tone, John resumed the story. "Then we were outside, you flagged the cab and then disappeared. I was hopping mad at the time, but with hindsight, I needed the time alone to think through what had happened. I kept wondering what the hell would have happened if I had not been trussed up as a hostage. Did you even know what you were going to do when you met him? Hadn't you realised that he was going to…I don't know what to call it." There was a snort of disbelief, then a little laugh. "Cliché it may be, but all I could think was 'welcome to the dark side.' Maybe, just maybe, because I was there, you didn't end up on his side."

A deeper breath. "I didn't know it- not consciously anyway- but that's when I realised that whatever else happened, you needed to keep me around just as much as I needed you. You said you always miss something. Well, this was a _big_ miss. We both get 'bored', Sherlock. And we both find what we are looking for in life by working on things _together._"

Sherlock heard the emphasis on the last word and sighed.

"And nothing- do you hear me, Sherlock?- _nothing_ that has happened since has changed my mind."

Sherlock reached over and turned the recorder off.

_I'm sorry, John._ Everything that had happened since that night had changed Sherlock's mind.

oOo

Sherlock wasn't sure whether it was the cough reflex or his autonomic nervous system warning that he was about to throw up- but, in either case, he was suddenly awake.

Then his body took over and he instinctively rolled onto his side before the bile started to come up. There was the sharp metallic tang in his mouth before the vomit reached it- as his brain came on line. _Why am I bleeding?_

The spasm in his stomach reached its peak and he began to retch, but his nose detected something else- the ammonia smell of urea. _What's going on?_

The vomiting didn't take long, but his brain was still confused. Slowly, recognition crept through the fog. This particular blend of sensations wasn't new. He had to work at it for a long time, but eventually the realisation dawned. _I've had a seizure._

He groaned and tried to sit up, keeping his eyes closed, knowing that the delay between his sense of balance and vision would distort and cause more nausea. That said, he also knew that the longer he stayed in contact with the horrid scents, the worse it would get. A full sensory melt down would be just what he didn't need; it would bring every medical professional in the near vicinity running, and end up justifying his brother's belief that he should be in hospital. He realised that he was lucky no one had heard anything.

He couldn't bear the thought of trying to stand up, so just shuffled to the edge of the bed and reached down for the floor. Once his hands made contact, he felt better, and he allowed the rest of him to tumble out. Once on his knees, he started to take off his pyjamas, which reeked.

By the time he crawled into the bathroom, he had left them behind. In the dark, he fumbled with the bath taps until he got the hot one running. A few moments later, he had managed to climb Everest and get into the bath where he clumsily washed off his own bodily fluids, and started to feel human again.

_Post-ictal confusion_. It was a nuisance because it disrupted his sense of time. At some point later, he had toweled off, put on his dressing gown and gone back into the bedroom. There was a demand for sleep that he kept ignoring, forcing himself to strip the bed, bundle the soiled sheets and his pyjamas into a ball and then back into the bathroom, where he could shut the door on them and try to keep their accusatory stench away from him. It was just too embarrassing; he wasn't a child. He knew that a seizure was responsible, but that didn't lessen the shame. He was busy manufacturing a plausible story- the soup at lunchtime had not agreed with him; it was just a side effect of withdrawal, nothing to be alarmed about.

Then he started to get angry. The welcome rush of adrenalin helped to push away the urge to sleep, but it made his hands shake. The adrenaline was also stoking up the fires of anxiety. Why did he have to invent an excuse for a bodily reaction to something he had no control over? _Because that's what doctors do to you- when you don't behave the way they want you to, they stuff you with drugs. _

He paced, forcing his body to deal with the after effects and move on.

As he passed the bedside table, the Ottoman Box sniggered. _There is another solution- a seven percent solution._

He ignored it. Sherlock was not going to indulge in suicidal ideation. Or the temporary oblivion offered by drug taking- either of his own choice or those foisted upon him. He was too keyed up, and needed to think this through.

The Skull avatar agreed. _Time for logic to do its part; you just need to stick to the plan._

Sherlock threw open the window again, letting the cold night air in to chase the smell of his shame away. Then he resumed his pacing. Tomorrow morning Mycroft would show up. He needed to convince him to remove the chip and call off the goons. Let him get back to work with Lestrade. There must be another case by now. Christmas was always a time when the murder rate jumped. All those unhappy families forced to pretend. It almost always ended in tears. Now that the withdrawal was nearly over, the best cure was _the Work_.

He'd said his goodbyes to John on the recordings. He would tell Diane first thing that he wasn't prepared to see him again, and that he and Mary should leave Hartswood. Then he'd do whatever the therapist recommended, so long as it was on an outpatient basis. Eventually, something would work to exorcise the ghosts of what happened in China. At the very least, putting distance between him and John would relieve some of the pressure and give him time to get himself back under control.

A wave of tiredness seized him and he had to stop pacing long enough to put a hand out onto the wall for support. _Can't sleep now_. What if it happened again? Anyway, the idea of lying down again on the stained mattress was too much to consider. It would have to be replaced.

His brain seemed to be going at a hundred miles an hour, but his body only twenty. It felt so _odd. _A wave of despair washed over him. That he was being forced into lying about what had just happened made him realise that people were intent on interfering- and he couldn't abide that. The more they fussed, the worse it got. Why didn't they understand that? The more John tried to convince him of his loyalty, the more it made Sherlock want to run away. He was unworthy of that trust, and he knew it. All that loyalty had done was expose John to risk. Even worse, John wasn't getting the message that his only chance at surviving, of having the life he wanted with Mary, meant that he had to stop all contact with Sherlock. _Alone is what I am; it's safest that way. _It had become his mantra.

As despair started to ebb, the rip-tide of frustration pulled at him. He was being weak. He had to stop this, get himself back under control. He recognised the all too familiar cycle- anxiety, paranoia, depression, anger- which just kept going round and round. Of all people, he should be able to control his own mind. But it was a whirling mess, thoughts warring with emotions, a fire had started in the corner of the Mind Lab, and he was rushing around trying to find a non-existent fire extinguisher. Flames had reached the volatile chemicals, and there were explosions. The smoke alarms were going off and the sprinkler system switched on; he could feel the wetness on his face. He opened his eyes and realised that he had come to a halt in front of the bedroom window. _In case of fire, break glass._ He pulled his fist back and followed the instructions.

* * *

**Author's Note**: *John's reaction is covered in _Ex Files, Expect_. What happened between John and Moriarty before Sherlock showed up is covered in the second chapter of _Collateral Damage_.


	8. Chapter 8

**Express **

**Chapter Eight- Ara**

* * *

Ara went up the back stairs. She'd not been to Sherlock's room at Parham before, but got the directions off Mrs Walters, who was still stewing about the mud on the carpet in the hallway.

_Damn, wish I'd been there._ Her mother had witnessed the prodigal son's return with Mycroft, coming into the house from the cold, and had come to tell Ara. She'd have given a lot to see Sherlock in his full mucky glory of feral mess; it would have given her something to compare with her images of him from the shooting party weekend almost five years ago. That memory brought a smirk to her face as she climbed to the first floor. She'd grown up in the interval; the gap was just under a quarter of her lifetime ago.

_People change._ The Honourable Lady Arabella Pembroke had grown into her skin a lot more in the interval, enough to be curious about what the years would have done to Sherlock. Perhaps very little; in her admittedly limited experience, once people reached the old age of thirty, time seemed to stand still for them until total decrepitude took over after fifty. But then, the past two years were not exactly _normal_ for Sherlock.

_My muse._ That's what the New York Times arts correspondent had called him, when visiting her one woman exhibition. "An entire floor devoted to a man whose suicide two years ago caused a ruckus and then a minor adjustment to the way the British tabloid media cover celebrity news." She'd almost choked on her Stumptown espresso, the finest coffee in Manhattan's flatiron district when she read that. She knew Sherlock wouldn't have given a damn then, and certainly wouldn't now, when his "resurrection" managed to capture the imagination in America as well as the UK. She was carrying her Canon EOS 6D SLR up the stairs now, wondering how she would talk him into another series of photos. She wanted to give them to Mycroft as a Christmas present.

As she climbed to the second floor, she remembered the moment when her mother told her that Sherlock was alive. She'd arrived in New York that late October afternoon from Heathrow, and come to Ara's shabby chic rented flat in Tribeca. Ara deposited her mum's hand luggage case onto the single bed in the curtained nook.

"Where are you going to sleep, my dear?" Caroline looked around the studio with some dismay.

She pointed to the futon. "It's efficient, Mum. That's what counts. I do my work in a rented studio, and just camp here to sleep, wash my clothes and chill out." Ara had made an effort- the place was tidy and clean, single bed made, bathroom scrubbed, clothes hung up, tiny kitchen corner de-cluttered. More important than the size or decor, she could afford it (just) on the income she made from her photography. It was acceptable.

But not in her mother's eyes, if Lady Caroline's scarcely concealed distaste was evidence.

"Right, for tonight, I will slum it with you. Tomorrow, I will find a hotel room. No need to cramp your style, Ara. Oh, and I'm taking you to dinner- looking at that," she scanned the scarcely used pots and eyed the well-used microwave, "it would appear that you are in need of some properly cooked food."

"_Mum_…" It was the wail of every young woman who ever suffered her mother's criticism about her life style. Ara heard herself doing it, and cringed internally. This was not what she wanted to be projecting now.

Lady Caroline turned to her and smiled. "Bring the particulars of the flats; you can tell me all about them over dinner."

"Apartments, Mum; that's what they call them over here." Ara had indeed downloaded a whole file of suitable places on her tablet. The question was whether her mother would consider them "suitable" enough to make the investment needed. Her trust fund needed her mother's co-signature on any payment over £10,000 until she was twenty-five.

Ara noted her mother was slightly on edge, but decided it was probably at the thought of Ara setting down some roots on this side of the Atlantic, rather than playing understudy to the role of landed aristocracy. She inwardly groaned; she was not looking forward to this discussion.

Caroline pulled a packet of Ara's favourite tea from her case and waved it. "Be a dear; I am dying for a proper cup of tea."

Once it was brewed and they were sitting across from each other on the futon, Ara was ready for the inevitable interrogation. Every time they met face to face, the conversation followed the same predictable format. Had she made any new friends? What was she doing socially? Did she have a new boyfriend? _Boring._

This time, however, Ara sensed her mother's nervousness and wondered what was causing it. "What's bugging you? You look like you're sitting on some big secret."

That brought an acknowledging smile.

_Oh_! "Mum, has he _finally_ proposed?" It was a regular tease between them.

Her mother smirked. "No. Something even _more_ extraordinary, my dear."

Ara gasped. "You're pregnant?!"

Caroline laughed out loud, and nearly spilt her tea. "No, of course not. Anyway, that's the sort of question I should be asking you, not the other way around."

Ara smirked. "Why not you? You're still young enough to produce a little brother for me. I'm far too controlling to get into pregnant, Mum. You, on the other hand, are more prone to accidents. I should know; I'm one of them."

"Not an _accident_, Ara; just a miscalculation of timing." Caroline had once told Ara in an unguarded moment that she was born nine months and ten minutes after the wedding, conceived before the just-turned-eighteen Caroline had realised she needed to have taken the pill for a week _before_ the wedding to be sure.

"So, what the hell is it?"

Caroline's face sobered, and her posture became more hesitant. "Something extraordinary. Really…it's hard to explain. If I had not seen with my own eyes, I might not have believed it. But, Mycroft was determined to tell me- and that I tell you here before the papers find out."

Ara's eyes widened, and she whispered, "Oh, God. He's got involved in some political scandal?"

Caroline smiled. "No, please. Stop trying to second-guess this. You won't- not in a million years."

The twenty two year old put a pout on her face. "Then bloody tell me. The suspense is killing me."

Caroline looked away. "Killing… well, that's sort of an appropriate word. Only someone we all thought was dead…turns out to be alive. And is back in London."

Ara blanked, and her face must have shown her confusion.

"Sherlock, my dear. Turns out, he never did kill himself. He's been working undercover, overseas for the past two years, and has returned to London."

Ara's brain stuttered to a halt. _WTF?_. Sherlock… the man whose pictures she'd made her reputation on…was _alive_. "Oh My God." It crept out, unbidden.

Her mother nodded. "For once, that rather overused phrase is warranted."

oOo

Now two months later, Ara was about to come face to face with Sherlock. In the intervening months, her mother had shared with her what she knew- that Mycroft had rescued him from somewhere overseas, and that he'd come back in pretty bad shape. Ara then devoured what the papers about his return, followed in rapid succession by his cracking the amazing underground bomb plot, the slavery ring working out of Tilbury, and then most recently, the case of the _Agrikoliades_ shipping scam. The internet was full of the stories of his exploits; there was more than just the hint of celebrity in his amazing story. The #SherlockLives fan base was going bonkers on tumblr- and more than one of her images of him, pirated from the limited editions, had been blogged and re-blogged, steadily climbing up Google Image's search engine. Ara smirked every time she read some gushing teenager's comments or tweets. _If only you knew how little he cares about what you all think._

So, she'd not contacted him. What on earth would she say? _Dear Sherlock, Remember me? The bratty teenager who teased you into letting her take your picture for Country Life?_ She had no idea how to even begin. And she was more than a little hesitant, wondering why on earth he would even acknowledge her existence. When her mother rang to talk to her in December, Ara tried to winkle out some details, but it was hard going. All Caroline knew, and therefore was able to pass on, was that Sherlock had "problems" adjusting to being back, that John Watson had moved out of Baker Street years ago and had a fiancée, and that Sherlock was "not well."

Even as late as the day of her flight, when Caroline said they would be spending Christmas at Parham, she'd tried to cut off Ara's inevitable question. "No, Ara; darling, I don't know. I think it unlikely. He's being treated for injuries and illness at a house in Surrey. I don't think we will be seeing him."

And then the man himself had sneaked into the house late on Christmas Day. Ara could legitimately make herself known. By the time she'd convinced herself that it was okay to do this, she'd arrived at the top floor and come down the corridor to the last door on the right. She knocked gently on a door that was just slightly ajar. "Sherlock?"

There was a faint reply, a "come in"- she'd heard it for sure, even though it sounded muffled. Ara pushed open the door and stepped into a completely dark room.

"Oh, God. I am sorry. You've gone to bed, and here am I waking you up and being a nuisance." She was flustered- unable to see anything in the dark, just thankful that her own blushes could not be seen.

"In here."

As her eyes adapted to the dark, she noticed a faint light coming from the right, through another slightly opened door. Ara he entered, following the sound of that baritone she still remembered as if it were yesterday.

She'd crossed the threshold before she realised that this was a bathroom. Pinned by embarrassment to the spot, she registered the flickering candlelight on the white tiles, the steam rising from a roll-top bath tub, in which all she could see was a head of dark curling hair.

She spluttered but couldn't get the words out, being hideously embarrassed.

"Hello, Ara."

She gulped, grateful for the dim light, and the fact that he hadn't turned to see her. She hastily hid the camera behind her back. _God, he'll think I'm a bloody pervert._

There was a small splash. "It's nothing you haven't seen before in a live art class."

Actually, when her eyes adjusted to the light, she realised that she couldn't see much from the threshold. The bath water was dark and the high sides of the roll top hid the details of the man's naked body. All that protruded was his head and right arm- she spotted a bandage on his hand, and knew that he was keeping it above water for a reason.

"Um…does that mean you're okay with having a conversation, or should I leave you in peace?"

"You've made the effort." He shrugged, setting off ripples in the bathwater. "But why are you here?"

"At Parham in general, or talking to you?"

"Both."

While she tried to untangle her tongue to put something together, he waved the bandaged hand. "Flip the lid down and have a seat. And you can put the camera down."

Another flood of red hit her cheeks as she followed the instructions. "Sorry…it's just kind of surgically attached to my hand these days. It's what I do." She looked down at the camera and wondered what the steam would do to the lens. _Interesting effect, wonder if he'd let me…_

"Still waiting for the answer."

She smirked. "Still impatient as ever then?"

There was a snort.

She sat on the toilet, which gave her a profile view of his face. "I'm at Parham because when I asked Mum what she wanted for Christmas, she said that she just wanted to spend it with me. As she had already said yes to being here, I couldn't argue. And it's actually convenient, because I want to give her a _real_ present- a set of photos of Mycroft."

That provoked another baritone snort. "Why on earth would anyone want _that_?"

"Yeah, well- ours is not to reason why two people get together. I can understand what he sees in her, but then, I'm biased. I'm not so sure what she sees in him or why when he's off being the British Government, she misses him."

There was an answering sigh from the bath. "Well, tell them to get on with it. They're not getting any younger."

Ara tilted her head. "Why would you care?"

"I don't- not in _that_ way. But, if my brother had a child of his own, he might let me be…more me and less him, if you know what I mean. I'd be off the hook. He'd have someone else to order around." She could see a frown forming on Sherlock's face, as he recanted. "Actually, that's probably grossly unfair on any child. Who would want to inflict that on an innocent?"

Ara heard something interesting in that question. It was the same old barbed comment she'd heard five years ago, but it wasn't delivered with any particular animosity. She braved a question of her own, "So, why are _you_ here?"

"To annoy Mycroft."

Now it was Ara's turn to snort. "Well, then you've failed miserably. He's positively beaming downstairs. I think he wanted you to spend Christmas here more than Mum wanted me to be with her."

"I can't imagine why." Sherlock slid his head under the water, his curls disappearing, leaving only the bandaged hand above the surface.

When he came up for air, she was ready. Six shots taken in rapid-fire succession. The water had sleeked back his hair, exposing the face in all its angled glory. The first two caught him just as his face broke through the surface, the water still running off. Ara had used the fact that he was under water to switch to a no flash, dim light setting, which meant two exposures a half second apart, with the digital pixels averaged- it removed blur. She waited for the inevitable explosion. Doesn't matter. She glanced down at the screen and saw what she was looking for- _he's a raptor. _She thought of an Osprey resurfacing after a daring raid to take a fish.

"Tell me why digital cameras make a noise that sounds like a shutter closing. I mean, there's no purpose. It could be utterly silent."

She breathed again, and answered lightly, "I think it's a generational thing. When the cameras first came out, people kept taking more than one shot, because they hadn't heard the noise." Emboldened by his lack of anger at her use of the camera, she raised it again. "It's a bit like people wanting electric cars to still sound like they have a petrol engine. It helps warn pedestrians used to just listening, rather than looking."

Ara took another picture, this one catching him just as he turned to look at her, peering over the edge of the roll-top bath. Emboldened by his apparent acquiescence to her camera, she asked, "Can you get your hand out of the picture?"

He glowered at the bandaged appendage. "No- John says I'm not to get it wet."

She could always photo-shop it out. "What happened?"

"I punched a window."

"Why?"

"The pain and blood loss triggers endorphins, which alter blood chemistry. I needed to stop thinking."

Startled by his answer, she looked up from the camera screen. "Sherlock Holmes…are you into self-harming?" Her surprise echoed in the bathroom.

He snorted and shook his head. "I'm not a teenager, Ara."

"Yeah, but…um…are you alright?"

He sighed and laid his head on the back of the tub, looking up at the ceiling again. "I'm getting there."

She laughed. "You sound like me talking to my therapist."

"You? What on earth do _you_ need a therapist for?"

She shrugged. "It's the done thing in NYC. _Everyone_ has one. I talk to mine about 'daddy issues.' "

He sank down into the water and blew some bubbles- a sort of raspberry of derision- before lifting his mouth clear of the water to say, "You were lucky enough on that score."

"He still died when I was young. And he wasn't exactly a role model for, well, for ever."

"A parent who is guilty of infidelity won't damage you, Ara. You are the most sane young person I know."

She smiled. "How many do you know?"

"More than you think. Of course, I suppose in comparison to my Homeless Network, you've had a privileged background."

"So did you. Yet you've spent time on the streets. Mum finally told me why she thought I shouldn't spend time with you when I first met you."

"She was right, but homelessness was not the reason."

"What then?"

"A multitude of sins, but probably this one in particular." He turned over the arm that was resting on the edge of the bath, revealing the inside of his elbow. Even in the faint light she could see bruises that tracked up his arm.

"She told me about that, too. How on earth do you manage to be so…amazing…when you're using drugs?"

"In my case, the question might be better asked how I manage to cope when I'm not." He flipped his arm back over.

"Is that where you've been? Rehab?"

"Not exactly. But I am clean again, so more able to cope with all _this." _He gestured around the bathroom, which Ara took to mean Parham.

She took another photo. "Listen, while you were away…I…sort of did something without asking your permission."

He smirked. "Hard to ask a dead man anything. What was it?"

She huffed. "Well, I'm not sure I ever bought the idea of you jumping off a building. Seemed too…orchestrated. You'd just OD if you wanted to commit suicide, or provoke one of your criminal suspects into taking you out."

There was no reply.

"Anyway, while you were away I had an exhibition of my photos- a show at a gallery in London and then one in New York. There were lots of you. It was just after the public inquiry that cleared your name, so there was a real buzz, which was good for the show."

"Did it help your career?"

"Yes, of course. You're _famous_. I got the right kind of attention at the right time, and I haven't looked back. I sold out every one of the limited edition prints of my photos with you in them- meant I could afford to stay in New York. And because of them new commissions are coming in and I've built a reputation that I'm comfortable with. So, thanks."

"Why do people want to buy your photographs?"

She smiled. It was a return to the conversation that the two of them had years ago, when she had spent three weeks at 221b, while on work placement as a crime scene photographer.

"It's who I am. It's showing people how I _see_." She raised the camera so she could see the screen, and zoomed in, so that the sharp angle of the cheekbone, the straight line of the nose and the half-closed lashes filled the screen, their defined shapes softened by the candlelight. "Think of it as my equivalent of your pocket magnifier."

He sniffed. "Yes, but I don't use it to create images for other people. It feels… a bit voyeuristic."

Ara bristled a bit. "I'm not paparazzi, Sherlock. I'm not here to invade your privacy. But photos of you are prized by others because not everyone is blessed- or should I say cursed- with an eidetic memory."

"I don't understand why anyone would want a photograph of me."

"It reminds them of you; it's part of memory."

"I don't understand that on several planes. Why would anyone want to remember me, and why would a photograph help them in that process?"

She sighed. _How to express the inexplicable to someone who has a photographic memory?_ In the years since, Ara had often thought about it. She and he had spent hours on the topic, late at night, after John had gone to bed, debating the ideas. Since then, she'd come to understand more what it must be like to be him.

Ara tossed her long blonde pony-tail back over her shoulder and said quietly, "I've spent some time researching the meaning of images and the role they play in memory. Not yours, I have to say; you work differently. But other people find their memories because of the emotions that arise from the image. Without emotion, the image goes in one eye and out the other- it doesn't take root in the brain. Think of it as an auto-delete function. You weren't born with one, but most people are. Without emotion, images we see can't be remembered."

He lifted his chin and she took another shot, catching his _I'm-thinking-seriously-about-this_ look.

Finally, he admitted in a slightly grudging tone, "You're right. I don't tag my visual files with emotion."

"Always knew you were different. I put photos of you into the public domain because people need to be reminded of you- the _real_ you, not the one made up by the tabloids."

"Why?"

She puffed out her cheeks in exasperation. "Because we thought you were dead, you berk. The photos helped everyone remember you. And, well, I felt a duty to put the truth out there. Not in words- I can't write worth crap. But my photos are an expression of you, what I see in you. People who didn't know you except through what the media had said learned something of the truth about you through my photos."

He didn't reply.

She felt a little exposed, and wondered if he was annoyed by the idea of her photos of him being made public. A little self-consciously, she said. "In your absence, I asked the others if it was okay to include in the show the ones of you."

"What _others_?"

"Your brother, Lestrade- some were from shots from the crime scenes when I was on work experience."

"Not John?"

She shook her head. "He never replied to my invitation. I don't think he's seen them." Ara wasn't sure that to say, but she _wanted_ to know. "Is he okay?"

"He's getting there."

She had to ask. Ara still remembered the photo she'd taken of Sherlock when she made him look at John. The shorter man had been busy moving a lamp at the time, and had not seen that way Sherlock's face changed when he looked at the doctor. "I heard he's got engaged to a woman he's living with now. How do you feel about that?"

There was a sigh. "Now you sound like _my_ therapist."

She took another photo, this one catching his expression that was half way between petulant and sad, then added quietly, "I'm still waiting for an answer."

He splashed the water with his left hand, an act of frustration. "Why does everyone assume the worst of that fact? We were _never_ a couple. If it makes him happy, then why on earth should I be anything other than pleased for him?"

_Oh, Sherlock. _ Ara realised that the man was still as blind to what Watson was to him as he'd been six years before, when she'd watched them during the shooting party.

"He must have been glad you came back."

"Eventually."

She realised that one word said a lot. "Made your peace, then?"

"I was never at war with him."

"What happens next?"

"You go next door and turn on the red lamp on the lab bench, while I get out. The water's gone cold."

She recognised that the conversation had come to an end, and got up to follow his instructions.

* * *

**Author's notes**: this chapter follows on from the epilogue of Magpie: One for Sorrow. Readers unfamiliar with Ara should read _The Shooting Party_ and _Exhibition- an Ex Files Special._


	9. Chapter 9

**Express **

**Chapter Nine (Lestrade)**

* * *

"Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice, Miss Goodliffe."

Behind the polite and briskly professional demeanour of the Detective Inspector, she felt something was keeping his shoulders tense. The last time she'd met him, it was at New Scotland Yard, on his home territory. The therapist gave him a reassuring smile. "And thank you for being willing to come to Reigate. I appreciate it. Especially as this must be a rare day off for you."

That got a hint of a smile from the Detective Inspector. She gestured to the comfortable chair opposite her and as he sat down, he answered, "Yeah, well…criminals don't tend to work on a predictable nine to five, Monday to Friday basis."

For a moment, his eyes roved around the room rather than looking at her. Her session room was over a homeware shop, on the High Street in the middle of Reigate. She had furnished it with a minimalist touch- soft beige, brown and cream furnishings were more about natural textures and easy-on-the-eye colours, designed to reassure anxious patients. Not a doctor's surgery, but it wasn't someone's home either. _Neutral territory_, she called it. The only decoration was a vase with a branch of flowering cherry in it on a small lacquer table, and a framed piece of oriental calligraphy on the wall. There was a small, intricately patterned Turkish carpet between the two chairs, a medley of tan, gold, black and brown threads.

"Does Sherlock come here?" He was trying to mask his incredulity, but not doing it very well.

"No. We decided it was better for his sessions to take place at Baker Street. He needs surroundings that are familiar enough not to be a distraction."

That got her a broader, knowing smile, but she could tell that he was still on edge. She decided he needed encouragement, so she asked, "How can I help, Detective Inspector?"

"Please, call me Greg. This isn't official business." His brown eyes seemed kindly, and she had come to understand a little more about him, since he had showed up at Hartswood to help Sherlock through detox in January. Doctor Cohen had explained about his relationship to her client, and she'd seen some of that in the way he handled himself with Sherlock- his patience and humour through the grueling withdrawal spoke of years of experience.

"It's about Sherlock."

That much she had guessed.

"I…um, don't know if the doctor-patient thing works, with someone like you? I mean, you're not actually a psychiatrist, are you?"

"He isn't a 'patient', Greg, because he isn't 'sick' and I am not a doctor." She smirked for a moment; "I wouldn't call him 'patient', in any way- not with me, not with the world, and certainly not with himself. He's a _client_. That said, I respect everyone's confidentiality, Greg. I couldn't help people if they didn't trust me. Sherlock is no different."

"Yeah, I figured. But, I need your advice."

"Tell me how you think I can help, and I will tell you if I can, within the bounds of confidentiality."

"John Watson told me that you've been back to help Sherlock recently, because of a case."

She nodded. The regular EMDR sessions had tapered off in mid-February, because Sherlock said he was no longer experiencing any flashbacks, and he'd figured out how to do the EMDR technique on his own. But then ten days ago, Watson called her and asked her to contact Sherlock, explaining that a case had 'repercussions', as he called it. After a brief discussion on the phone, she'd seen Sherlock twice since, to try to help him recover from what she would classify as not quite a relapse- more a temporary setback. He'd been unsettled, and had told her that something he'd had to do for a case was to blame.

"It's my fault." Greg was no longer trying to hide his discomfort, so this was blurted out.

"In what way do you think you are responsible for what happened?"

He sighed, and sat back in the chair, looking unhappy. "I have to be careful these days. There are people at the Met who still don't like the idea of him working cases with us. Early days and all that. I keep getting lectures from the new Chief Superintendent about having to follow all the correct procedures. 'No exceptions', he says. And, well…I've been in the doghouse for the past two years and need to be seen toeing the line. So, when Sherlock wanted to interrogate a suspect who was in the middle of a confession, I told him no- and quoted the rule book at him. He went off in a sulk, and then spent three days off God knows where doing things he shouldn't have done- taking risks he shouldn't have taken- to prove the guy was innocent and I was an idiot."

She decided to ask a question of her own, partly to forestall what she thought he might want to ask about Sherlock. "You've worked with him for years. Was he always prone to taking unacceptable risks?"

Lestrade snorted, "Yeah, risk is his middle name. He's spent the last twenty years doing things that most people would think of as certifiable. But, he gets away with it, because it works. Before…" he ran out of steam for a moment, and she realised that he was thinking about the fake suicide and being away for two years. "…before he did his disappearing act, whenever he worked a case with me, I had someone keep an eye on him, to stop him bolting off on his own to chase a suspect, or put himself in danger."

"Did it work?"

"Not always. And when it didn't, his brother used to make it clear that I wasn't abiding by the rules. Then John Watson came along and I could relax a bit; he watched Sherlock's back, and injected a bit of sanity into some of the more hair-brained schemes. Since he's been back, though- well, you know that he kept John at a distance, so I won't go over all that again. And, at the start when he got back, the cases before Christmas, it didn't matter; it was like he had raised his game. The Tilbury Trafficking bust and then the City fraud- well, they're _huge_. And although he took risks, they seemed more measured. I mean, hell…this is the guy who took apart Moriarty's network, so who am I to tell him what he can and can't do? He made sure that when he was working a scene with us, it was all according to the book. He wasn't even rude to my team- which was definitely a step in the right direction. But…" he tapered off, "…well, you know how it ended, with him using, then the breakdown. Since Hartswood, I've only worked three cases with him. The first two he was…a bit tentative, but all done by the book."

"Third time unlucky? This time, he didn't?"

Greg shook his head. "No, but that's my fault. I told him that he had no _proof_, so I couldn't let him do what he wanted. Then three days later, John Watson shows up and tears a strip of flesh off of me, because Sherlock went off and drugged himself so he'd present the right symptoms to get onto an experimental treatment trial that he suspected was being manipulated. A patient had been murdered to keep the truth from coming out, and he said it was the only way to get the proof I had demanded."

She decided he'd set the scene enough. "So, ask me what you want to ask, and I will tell you if I can answer it."

Greg looked out the window for a moment. When his dark eyes came back to her, there was an equal measure of worry and sadness in them.

"Is he okay? I mean, _really_? Is it safe for him to be back doing cases?"

"What do you think?"

His brow creased. "I don't _know_. I used to know- I was the one who argued with his brother that he couldn't, shouldn't stop Sherlock from working cases; it's what the man _lives _for. But, if he's going to get himself killed doing it, then should I be the one aiding and abetting that?" Greg's distress was clear.

"You're worried that you are enabling his impulsive risk taking."

Greg nodded.

"You feel guilty."

"Sure I do. You have no idea…"

"Tell me more."

He snorted. "I'm the one who _arrested_ him on those trumped up charges. When he ended up on the roof of St Barts, all I could think of was that I'd been the one to push him over the edge. And unlike John Watson, I had the telephone recording- the one where that Irish nutter threatened to kill me along with John and Mrs Hudson if he didn't jump. For weeks, months, I kept thinking if I hadn't arrested him, if he hadn't been a fugitive…if I'd known what to say to stop him from going up on that roof. If I hadn't been be a target. Me…it was my fault he died."

She shook her head firmly, then took a moment to push a wayward wave of her auburn hair back into place. "You weren't to blame, but he _let_ you think that. In the tape you let me record before you went to Hartswood, you told me about your reunion, but you didn't talk much then about how you must have been hurt by his lying about his death. John Watson was angry about that betrayal of trust. But, you said you forgave him when you first laid eyes on him, returned from the dead. Why?"

"Me? There was nothing for _me_ to forgive _him_ for. What shocked me was that he wouldn't even let me get my apology to him out of my mouth; wouldn't hear of it. Wasn't my fault, he said. _He_ _forgave me_."

She smiled again, "and you have no idea how important that was for him."

Lestrade looked puzzled.

"Sherlock doesn't apologise very often, does he?"

Greg shook his head. "I used to think it was just his arrogance. But I came to realise that a lot of what he does is because he doesn't understand what's going on in other people's heads. Especially people he knows well. He doesn't understand that people who care about him would take offence."

Diane laughed. "He sometimes understands more than he lets on. The '_I-don't do-empathy' _is part of his protective camouflage. The sociopath label can be quite useful as a way of making people keep their distance."

Lestrade's eyes narrowed a bit, as if he wasn't sure how to tell her he disagreed. "He thinks differently than we do; and that's okay. He doesn't need to apologise, not to me, not to anybody, for what he is. The whole bloody world owes him an apology right now."

She chuckled softly. "You really do like him."

He looked a bit embarrassed. "Yeah, I do, God help me." Then his face went through a whole series of micro-expressions- too fast even for her to pick up on. He ended up looking at the floor, as if the Turkish carpet was something new and fascinating.

"What's wrong?"

"Years ago, Mycroft Holmes accused me of _using_ Sherlock, of taking advantage of his abilities, to help solve my cases, to help my career. He said I was endangering a vulnerable person. Given what happened after he…disappeared, I realise how much I had come to rely on him for solving my cases, for giving my MIT the best clear up rate on the force. And now that he's back, I wonder if I'm being selfish again, leading him into taking risks that he shouldn't be taking."

"Have you ever thought that one of the reasons he wants to solve cases so much is because it gives him an excuse to be with you?"

He snorted. "Not on your life. He lives for solving the crimes; I'm just an accessory- a useful means to an end."

"Don't say that; don't even think it, because it isn't true. If all he wanted was difficult cases or intellectual challenges, he'd stay working for his brother. You do him a disservice when you don't recognise that part of what he wants is to be useful to _you_. You were one of the three people targeted. Mycroft wasn't. _You matter to him._"

He looked uncomfortable. "Then that makes it almost worse, because I've let him down, not looked after his best interests."

Diane thought that through, as the silence lengthened. She decided that she wouldn't let him get away with such a mistake- it was important that he understood this. If it came a little close to that grey area between keeping confidentiality and helping a client, well…so be it.

"You're not my client. But, I have a duty of care to my client, and that means I won't hold any punches when it comes to you, Greg. He let you in- at Hartswood, when no one else was allowed anywhere near him. And it's not the first time. He knows that whatever he does, however awful it is, it can't destroy your faith in him. It's called unconditional love. He doesn't think he gets that from Mycroft, and right now, he's still wary about John, given his initial reception and the added complication of Mary. Those two are trying their damned best to convince him otherwise, but, right now? Sherlock needs _you_ most of all, Greg, so don't you dare say you think you should stop working with him. And don't withhold your approval of what he does. Or your disapproval either- if he's done something daft, then tell him. He needs you to set boundaries, not run away.

"Whatever you do, don't stop him from working with you. He'll take that as the final sign that what he did when he went off the roof cannot be retrieved. Right now, he needs _hope. _Without that, I worry about him. He's making progress, but it's never a straight line to recovery. If he thinks it wasn't worth it, if he thinks he shouldn't have come back because the people he cares about don't want him here … Well, Esther Cohen told me that Sherlock has never valued his own life; I don't want you to test that theory."

He looked shocked. "Really?"

She nodded. "So, Detective Inspector, get back to work, preferably _with_ Sherlock, as soon as possible. You _both_ need it."

He nodded, and left.

As Diane watched from the window, she saw Greg heading towards the rail station; was it her imagination? Perhaps…but she thought there was a spring in his step.


	10. Chapter 10

**Express ****Chapter Ten**

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**Author's note**: this follows on from the story in the latest chapter of _Magpie: Two for Joy_

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"Hello, Miss Hooper; please let me take your coat. Do take a seat."

Diane Goodliffe gave the young woman a welcoming smile, and gestured to the chair. She took in the slightly eclectic choice of clothes, the long hand-knitted scarf, a sensible pair of boots. It was cold outside, but her therapy room was warm enough. She tried to keep it a happy medium between cosy but not so warm as to put her clients to sleep. In early March, it meant changing the thermostat several times a day.

Beginnings were always important with new clients, many of whom would be ill-at-ease and anxious about even admitting that they were seeking help of a qualified therapist. Miss Hooper had contacted her by e mail to request the appointment, and the one brief call they'd had to set the time told her that the prospective client was a little tongue-tied and nervous over the phone. The woman had said she only wanted to pay for only a single session, "just the one" before giving her credit card details. That was fair enough- a lot of clients wanted to try a therapist once, just to see if the relationship would work for them. Diane worked hard at avoiding pre-judgments; it made no sense to try to jump to any conclusions before she'd even met her.

But this young woman certainly looked uncomfortable and on edge, almost as bad as she had sounded on the phone. She sat as instructed and waited for Diane to hang up the coat and take her own seat across from her.

"Um, Doctor Goodliffe, I need to explain something."

Diane smiled. "I'm not a doctor, Miss Hooper. I'm not a psychiatrist, either, just a qualified therapist. You can call me either Diane, if that is comfortable for you, or Miss Goodliffe, if you'd prefer something more formal. It's entirely up to you." She kept her contralto gentle and warm, sensing her need for reassurance.

A flicker of something in the dark brown eyes. _Impatience? _ Diane stilled her reactions, trying to be open to the moment.

"Diane, then, but you have to call me Molly."

The older woman gave an encouraging smile. "Molly…how can I help?"

"I'm not here for myself, but rather for a friend."

Diane tried to keep her face neutral. This could be the truth, but it could also be a convenient dodge. Sometimes "a friend" was a term used by people who were not willing to take ownership of their own problem the first time they met a therapist. She had to be truthful, so said simply "I can't help a person who isn't in the room and hasn't consented to therapy. But I can help _you,_ if you are concerned about someone else and need guidance on how to deal with the situation."

Molly nodded. "That's just the point. My friend is one of your patients. Detective Inspector Lestrade said I should tell you what happened; that you would know what should be done."

_Oh._ "Greg Lestrade…then you're talking about Sherlock Holmes? How do you know him?"

"I'm a forensic pathologist working for the Guys and St Thomas Hospital Trust. You won't know who I am; no one that you've been talking to will have mentioned me. Not Sherlock; _especially_ not Sherlock. But, I know them all. The detective inspector, John Watson, even his fiancé Mary- I've met her. And I've known Sherlock for _years._" She stopped, as if debating something. Then in a resolute tone, she continued. "Just so you understand- I was the only one of those people who knew he was alive, when the others didn't. I'm under no illusions, though. He needed me to make his disappearance work, so he told me. But, Sherlock _trusted_ me with that fact, that I would keep his secret for the whole time he was away."

Diane considered that, and wondered about its significance. But it didn't really change her mind. "I haven't seen Sherlock for nearly a month now. I'm not sure whether he would even think that he was still a client. Even if he did, I can't talk about him. That would be unethical."

Molly nodded, but was looking down at the oriental carpet that was on the floor between them. "I know that. I just want to tell you something, and then you can decide what to do with that knowledge. And, if you can suggest anything that I might do, well…that would be good, too."

"If you've been speaking to the Detective Inspector, did he tell you why Sherlock was seeing me?"

That got her a nod. "Yes, of course; he told me about the PTSD and that it came from …stuff that happened while Sherlock was away. The Detective Inspector told me that you'd helped Sherlock a lot; that's why I thought I should tell you that something else is happening. Sherlock is not okay. No matter what he says now about being fine."

Diane didn't want to encourage her into thinking that she could be more helpful than she'd already said, so she did not reply, but rather opened her hands in a gesture that said 'and?'

"I know what Sherlock is like. He doesn't talk about what he feels. I've always wondered if Sherlock was somewhere on the Autistic Spectrum. He calls himself a high-functioning sociopath, but that's not a proper medical term. When he told me that, I was curious and researched. That's what I do for a living; figure out puzzles in people who cannot speak for themselves. He's neuroatypical; even if he hasn't been officially diagnosed, that much I can figure out."

Diane could not confirm or deny, without breaching client confidentiality. "You know I can't say anything about this. But, I can ask you why you are concerned about Sherlock. Let's start there."

"Over the years I've known Sherlock, he's got better at some things, like…well, it's hard to describe. Some of the things- his rudeness, for example- well, if you didn't know him the way I do, then you might think he was just…a bit eccentric, but nothing else. Lots of people just assume he's arrogant because he's a genius, and don't think any further. He was _far_ worse in the early days."

The Sherlock that Diane had come to know as a client manifested few of the things she associated with people on the Spectrum. He was articulate, could communicate well with others and was capable, if reluctant, to express emotion. The recent drug use and the difficulties he was going through adjusting back to life in the UK were related to his being tortured. The PTSD had been the focus of their therapeutic work, and the EMDR treatment a resounding success.

"Has something happened recently to change your view about him?" Diane probed and then waited, as Miss Hooper seemed to need time to gather her thoughts.

"A few days ago, Sherlock came to the lab where I work; he had some questions to ask about John and Mary's wedding. You know he's John's Best Man and is planning the wedding for them?"

"No, I didn't; that sounds wonderful. " Diane was genuinely surprised and delighted to hear the news. "It's a great opportunity for him to work on building a normal relationship with John and Mary."

Molly drew breath. "I don't know about that. I'm not sure he sees it that way. I think it's …I don't know, something that he thinks he _owes_ John, something that he has to do in order to keep John's friendship. But, he's obsessing about it- getting really fixated on trying to control every little detail, and getting anxious about it, too. He used to come to the lab regularly when he was working on a case, or to collect specimens for his experiments. But, he doesn't do that now; in fact, I've hardly seen him show any interest at all in his experiments since he got back. That's not like him."

The young woman stopped for a moment, a frown forming as she looked down at her hands. When she looked back up at Diane, there seemed to be a quiet determination- as if she'd made a decision. "It's probably not my place to say this, but, I'm worried about him. The only time he's come to see me in almost six weeks, and he wanted to talk about the wedding guest list. He was pretty worked up about it. All that wedding stuff he's doing is sort of …I don't know…a smokescreen?" Her hands were twisting anxiously, in her lap.

Diane tried to assess what the pathologist's concern was. Could it be that she had welcomed Sherlock's professional attentions before, and was now upset simply because he was too busy these days with other people? "Why do you think that? Are you saying that he isn't capable of doing something to help his friend?"

Molly shook her head. "No, you don't understand." She looked away again, this time at the vase with the silk flower in it. "Um…that's my fault, sorry…because I'm not explaining things right. He'd do _anything_ for John; he even faked his own death to help protect him. So, the wedding stuff; Sherlock would do something that he's not comfortable doing, because it's helping John. It's not that; it's just… something's not right. He's _acting_ like he's okay, trying to keep people from knowing what's really going on, about how upset he is."

"Miss Hooper, it's common for those who care about someone on the Spectrum to misinterpret their actions- to impute an emotional meaning when one might not have been felt by the person. Is it possible that Sherlock has just been changed by what happened while he was away, that the things he used to enjoy before are no longer as important to him, and that you are just picking up on those changes?"

This time, Molly shook her head vehemently. "No. This is more. I think he's _sad_ again. Sad that nothing is the same as it was, that nothing will ever be the same."

"Sad? Have you ever thought that sadness might be an appropriate emotional response to the situation? This is a difficult time for him- transitions are. The Watson wedding is a life event for Sherlock- a person he lived with, worked with, someone he took such extreme measures to protect- perhaps the only person he considers to be a friend- is getting married. What you see as sadness may be a sign of his emotional intelligence; he could be coming to terms with the change. That would actually be a step forward for him, to be able to express his sadness."

"I've thought of that. But it's more than sad, the way you or I would feel things. I think he is depressed. And that might lead him to do things he shouldn't do."

Diane wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but wondered whether the young woman was over-reacting. Sherlock had showed classic signs of PTSD, complete with triggers and meltdowns. She had not observed any signs of clinical depression. Cautiously, she offered, "Is depression something that you have studied much? I would have thought a forensic pathologist wouldn't have a lot of opportunity to diagnose it."

Molly's cheeks flushed. "I know enough that depression in autism isn't expressed by the usual symptoms. What I saw three days ago is that Sherlock is really struggling. Some of the stuff that I read about people on the Spectrum- well, I've never seen him do any of it, so I didn't think it really applied to him. But, when he showed up earlier this week…it was like something out of a textbook. And I have checked again, reading up on the symptoms." She ended a little defensively by crossing her arms.

"Such as…?"

"Echolalia, to start with. I mean…usually, he's so quick; just bites the head off of anyone who can't keep up. 'You know I hate repeating myself.'- it's like a slogan of his. Yet he kept doing it- repeating what I was saying, before answering himself. And there were a couple of times that his answers didn't come out at the right time- like he'd lost track of the conversation. It was weird."

Molly uncrossed her arms and straightened her back in the chair, her posture showing her determination. "Something's not right; I can tell, but when I asked him, he said he was fine. But he always does that. Then he sort of bolted out of the room. It was so strange…I decided to follow him up the stairs, to see if he was really okay. I called out to him, but he ignored me and kept going, as if he hadn't heard. Then he fell." She stopped, and the frown of worry deepened. "He's usually so fluid in his movement; he's incredibly coordinated. But he just completely misjudged a step and then missed grabbing the bannister. He came down hard on his knee- must have hurt like hell. I rushed up to give him a hand, but he just shoved me off, staggered to his feet and then ran away up the stairs, like he didn't recognise me- almost as if he was afraid. I thought maybe he was having a PTSD flashback. By the time I got outside, he was already getting into the back of a taxi. He didn't even look back."

Diane thought about the sequence, and began to wonder if Molly was right- that Sherlock was having problems.

The pathologist continued. "I once told him I don't count. That was before…before he staged his death. I think he was surprised that I had seen his sadness back then. He showed up on the last night and told me I did count, but I think that he just said it to get me to agree to sign the death certificate when he faked his suicide. Sherlock is…like that. He doesn't...didn't realise that...I would have done it for him, even if he hadn't said that I counted. But, over the years while he was gone, I worried about him, all that time...on his own…He told me that it wouldn't be hard to pretend that he was dead, because it was quite likely that he'd be killed at some point." Molly stopped, her eyes filling. Then she calmed herself. "Of course, I was so happy when he came back."

Diane realised that Molly was twisting an engagement ring on her finger. _Oh. _The realisation became a revelation. _She loves him._ And while Sherlock was away, the young woman had done what John had done- found comfort in another.

Diane's heart went out to her. From what she knew about Sherlock, she doubted the feelings were requited in any meaningful way. The pathologist knew that, too- she'd admitted as much when she's said earlier that Sherlock was not likely to have mentioned her.

The therapist had seen over the past three months just what caring about Sherlock meant. Each of those who had come to her and spoken to express their fears, all of them cared so much for him. But, Sherlock had no idea that he could inspire this degree of loyalty, or create an emotional tie in the people who were his support network. They were what gave her hope that he would come to terms with all that had changed and was still changing in his life.

Diane wondered if the same could be said about the young woman sitting in front of her. She decided to seize the initiative. Whatever was going on with Sherlock, there was a person in some distress in front of her, and she wanted to help.

"Miss Hooper, I can see that you care about Sherlock. I know that coming here to talk to me is a demonstration of that fact, and I respect it. Does his return cause you…difficulties of a personal nature?" She tried to ask the question in a fairly oblique style, but if Molly wanted to talk about it, she would see the therapist was willing to do so.

Molly blushed red, and stammered. "No…n…no. You misunderstand. I'm engaged. I'm happy. Tom is a wonderful man. He's lovely… and _normal_. Nothing to do with bodies…crimes…any of that. He's…good to me…I mean good _for_ me." Then she steadied. "What I think about Sherlock is nothing to do with me and my private life; it's just I am…concerned that no one else sees what I am seeing."

"And what is that, Molly?"

"He's teetering on the edge. And no one seems to know that behind the act, he's coming apart at the seams. Someone needs to do something before it's too late."

"Have you talked to John Watson about this incident in the stairwell?"

The pathologist shook her head. "No. I'm…" She stopped, derailed for a moment by uncertainty. "I'm not sure he wants to hear this. He would think I'm interfering. He wasn't very happy to learn that I knew about Sherlock being alive, when he didn't. He and Sherlock, well…it took him time to get over his anger. I don't want to make him _angry_ at Sherlock again."

"Do you think Sherlock would talk to me about this if I were to contact him?"

Molly gave a little laugh. "No. Not a chance. But _you_ can talk to the others. And I think because you aren't as close to Sherlock as they are, you won't be deflected. They'll listen to you, in a way that they won't to me. Sherlock won't listen to me: I'm not really sure he listens to anyone, which is why I'm here. He's good at avoiding people and… stuff like this. And every one else, his friends and family, love him and wants him to be well, so they don't want to see that he isn't. You're more objective. If you've managed to help him in the past, then you must be good at what you do. I'll trust you to do what is necessary."

The pathologist gave a little nod of her head, as if content now that she'd done what she'd come to do. "That's all I have to say. I won't waste anymore of your time."

"It's not a waste of time if this conversation has been helpful to you."

A firm look took hold on the face of the woman opposite her. "It's only helpful to me, so long as you're willing to do what is needed for Sherlock, Miss Goodliffe." Molly stood up and collected her coat, removing an envelope from her coat pocket, putting it on the little table. Diane rose from her own chair.

"Thank you, Miss Goodliffe. The payment for this session is in the envelope. Goodbye." She didn't look back.

Diane waited until the front door downstairs closed. Then she fished her phone out of her handbag and started scrolling down for Esther Cohen's number, praying that she had not deleted it last month.


	11. Chapter 11

**Express**

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**Author's note: **a belated birthday present for Ghyllwyn, who over the past year has been a source of fun, wit and wisdom, moving beyond the fandom to become a true friend. This follows on from _Magpie: Two for Joy, Chapter Six_ and is a gesture of my appreciation… Quite a few plot threads are pulled together.

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**Chapter Eleven**

"Good evening, M'Lord."

His housekeeper greeted him at the door to Number 2, South Eaton Place. Mycroft took in her slightly anxious manner, and gave her a faked smile designed to reassure, as he slipped out of his coat and scarf. Before she could say anything, he forestalled her.

"Thank you, Miss Forester. The security team has already advised me." He kept his tone calm, even though his actual thoughts were anything but. Now was not a good time to be expressing anything of what he was actually feeling. Mycroft had elevated to an art form his ability to manage a crisis behind the façade of utter placidity- and right now he needed to be a veritable Michelangelo, so he focused on the purely domestic. "Did Lady Caroline ask you to provide our two guests with some refreshment?"

"Yes, M'Lord. They opted for tea, which I served fifteen minutes ago."

Behind him, the chauffeur rolled his carry-on bag into the hall. "We'll need to leave again in twenty minutes, sir, if we are to make the reception in time."

That would be cutting it very fine; his schedule had been tightened by the delay in landing his plane- "congestion" on the flightpath. Mycroft's burdens went from overwhelming to somewhere near impossibly heavier when the call from security came in on his way home from the airport. "Sir, Lady Caroline has just admitted two visitors to the townhouse- Miss Diane Goodliffe and Doctor Cohen."

Because he had been alone in the back of the car, he allowed himself to put his hand to his head in dismay, but he was able just to stifle the accompanying sigh, so no discomfort was expressed to his head of personal security.

"Not to be helped, Chalmers; thank you for the warning." Crisp, business-like. No need to let anyone know what he really thought.

Mycroft had then spent the next forty minutes inwardly cursing this latest case of bad timing. Traffic was slow around Hammersmith- even the flyover was nose-to-tail traffic. It was time enough to phone Ketevan again. He'd dared not risk a call to her from Tbilisi; who knows who might have been listening? But once on the ground, he'd been disappointed not to find her in the waiting car. He tried to connect, only to find his call going straight to voice mail, _again_. Her phone was almost never on voice mail, and his level of anxiety ratcheted up yet another notch. Even though his previous call would have left a caller ID she'd recognise, this time he left a message.

"Call me- now."

He kept the tone of his voice mail message to her sounding routine- not the scream of alarm and worry that he was actually feeling. Mycroft needed to be able to talk to the only person alive who would really understand what was going on in his head at the moment.

The appalling traffic around Cromwell Road gave him yet time to realise that he just needed to calm down. His PA was entitled to a private life. Although what he'd discovered in Georgia was terrible, it wasn't especially time sensitive. Mycroft spent a few moments to compose himself. He was exhausted by the trip- both mentally and physically, but too agitated to contemplate rest. He knew for certain that sleep tonight would be impossible. At home alone, he would be driven to keep working, even though he knew he was far from peak performance.

In fact, for that very reason, Mycroft had not cancelled his original plans for the evening. He was actually looking forward to the diplomatic reception for the new Head of EU Mission as a bit of down time to be spent with Caroline. For just a few hours, he needed the solace and distraction of her company in the splendid surroundings of Whitehall's Banqueting House. Mycroft realised that she had become an oasis of calm in his mind, and after his discoveries in Georgia, he was in sore need of that respite.

Now standing in the hall of his townhouse, looking at the bamboo cane handle of his furled umbrella as he passed it to Miss Forester, he could not help but think of the old adage, _it never rains, but it pours. _As horrible as the past two days had been for him, if Sherlock's therapist and the psychiatrist had joined forces to arrive at the townhouse without an appointment, then his brother must be deteriorating rather faster than he had predicted. And that threw an unexpected spanner into his plans for this evening at the very least.

Pausing in the hallway for a moment, Mycroft took a deep breath, and then pushed open the door to the front sitting room.

Lady Caroline was already dressed in an elegant emerald green evening dress, sitting in her favourite chair; the two other women were rather uncomfortably perched on the settee, their formal posture influenced no doubt by their reasons for being there. The furniture was French antique; he had reinstated his mother's heirlooms after his father died, including a pair of hand coloured prints of hunting scenes by Carle Vernet, a relative from the French side of her family. Mycroft had always found the bright, feminine room a pleasant reminder of her exquisite taste, and it usually calmed him.

One look at Esther Cohen's face eliminated that effect.

"Oh, dear- a deputation." What might have come out flippant manged to end up sounding like more weary resignation.

Lady Caroline flashed him a sympathetic smile, and then stood. "I'll give you some privacy."

For a moment, he hesitated and almost asked her to stay. But, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Esther give a tiny shake of her head- as if to say, not a good idea_._

But he wasn't quite prepared to throw away his evening respite. "Before you go, my dear, let me find out how long this is going to take."

Briskly, Doctor Cohen answered, "Too long to make the reception that Lady Caroline has been telling us about. Sorry, you will need to make your apologies."

He sighed, and Caroline put a hand gently on his arm as she passed. "No problem. I'll contact the _chargé d'affaires_, then change and wait for you in the conservatory when you're done."

"I'm sorry, my dear- having you come all this way from Wiltshire for nothing. Tell Mrs Forester about our change of plans; she'll fix you something light for a meal." His own stomach was so acidic that he'd been off his food for the past thirty six hours- ever since he'd looked through a particular prison cell door and not seen the person he so desperately needed to see in there.

Mycroft heard Caroline shut the door quietly behind her, as he turned to the two women. Esther Cohen was wearing her concern like a suit of armour. He'd come to know that look over the years, and it no longer surprised him. The other woman took more deducing. He'd only met Diane Goodliffe a few times- once before Hartswood and then only in passing at the Manor House in Reigate* She exuded an aura of conscious controlled calm- no doubt, she was well trained in handling relatives of her clients.

Suddenly tired of all the politeness, he snapped out, "So, are you proposing an intervention? Or is this an early warning?"

The auburn-haired therapist was slightly startled by his sudden bluntness, but the older psychiatrist took it in her stride. "That depends on you, Mycroft."

He dropped wearily down into the chair that Caroline had just vacated, caught the trace of her _Cabochard_ perfume and closed his eyes for a moment, using the scent to ground himself. Then he opened his eyes. "Why? What's he done _now_?" He put a little more stress on the last word, to underline his irritation.

Esther deferred to the therapist, who began to speak in her quiet contralto. "It's more what he _might_ do that brings us here, Mister Holmes. I had a visitor today- a Miss Hooper, whom I believe you know. She told me about the last time she saw Sherlock- two days ago, and his state of mind at the time. I would not normally discuss a client with someone- but Sherlock has terminated our contact. When I tried to contact him after her visit, his text was…to the point." She recited from memory: "No further need of your services. Goodbye."

He sniffed. "Yet, for some reason you chose to ignore professional ethics and got in touch with Doctor Cohen."

Goodliffe nodded, slowly. "There are circumstances when the person's well-being require action be taken. I consulted a medical professional, and …"

"…here we are." Esther completed the sentence.

"So, what is it this time?"

Perhaps it was her age that gave her courage, but Doctor Cohen snapped, "It _worries_ me that you don't know the answer to that question yourself. I understand you've been away, but it's not like you to be too busy to notice or to listen to those you pay to keep an eye on him. If you had bothered, you'd know that he's had at least one episode of disassociation and sensory meltdown. He's lost control of some of his executive function, and was showing perseveration symptoms before he disappeared off the radar. These are symptoms I haven't seen from him in more than a decade- and we both know how it ended on that occasion- with drug use and then an intentional overdose. When was the last time you spoke with your PA?"

The apparent _non sequitur _disturbed him. There was no way he could answer her question with the whole truth. He couldn't tell Cohen or anyone for that matter that Ketevan had texted him on his way to the airport to tell him that Sherlock had the code book. His countdown had started ticking then. Mycroft knew it would take his brother some time to decode the two files, even with the book. And then he would need to think about what it meant, because that would not be clear from the data on the two files. He'd know that there was a person of interest in Georgia and that something or someone was being moved- but, thank God, not enough to know who he was or why he'd been incarcerated there. There were less than a dozen people in the world who knew that the prisoner was Mycroft's half-brother- well, a dozen, if you counted Fitzroy Ford himself in that list. But, knowing Sherlock was on the trail put even more pressure on Mycroft to find out what he needed to know in Tbilisi.

Unfortunately, it had turned out to be the worst case scenario. No, that was inaccurate; it was even _worse_ than he had feared. He'd gone there thinking that the worst would be to find that someone was killing his agents because they were trying to discover what lay behind his "the Georgian Connection", as Lady Smallwood once called it, and just who was languishing in the Gldani prison.

What he'd found was far, far worse- the stuff of nightmares, if truth be told. When he looked through the prison door window, the person inside was not Fitzroy Ford, not the man he had personally escorted into the prison in 2001 for crimes committed against quite a number of states. Ford had managed not only to escape, but he'd put in place a substitute who was willing to endure solitary confinement and play the part demanded of him. The blood that was supposed to be proof of Ford's continued incarceration had been duly drawn each month from an imposter.

_DNA doesn't lie. _ But, what Mycroft had not factored into the arrangement was that the record held by his service against which the sample was tested could be altered, and he would never realise the difference. The positive match would be reported to him, and passed onto Magnussen without him realising that it was fraudulent. The monthly contact reports, the photographs and video footage that had been forwarded to London as additional proof were therefore all lies- fabricated earlier but doctored to show them as current, even though regular tests were supposed to be done to ensure that was not occurring. In short, somewhere in his own service, there was a traitor willing to do Ford's bidding.

Mycroft had gone from total disbelief straight through complete panic onto incandescent rage, while standing there looking dumbfounded at the prisoner who was not his half-brother.

Under questioning, it had taken him only two hours to realise that the mute imposter was simply a patsy who had been blackmailed into taking Ford's place and knew nothing about exactly how and when the switch of prisoners had occurred, nor about the extent of corruption in the whole chain of command, from prison officers all the way up to the head of the Security Service in Georgia- and beyond into the UK, where the record held by the MI6 facility had been altered, so the tests would be declared positive.

That set Mycroft off on another frenzy of interrogations in Tbilisi- private occasions, orchestrated by Ketevan's father who was willing to call in every favour he'd ever been owed. Unfettered by British legal rules about interrogations, he uncovered a truth that was shocking. The plot to release Ford had started nearly four years ago.

For years, whilst still in his specially constructed solitary confinement cell block, Ford had been in daily contact with a network of associates and able to start planning his escape. When it finally came to the escape, Mycroft had been otherwise pre-occupied, watching the final stages unfold of his brother's plans to take on Moriarty. As long as the blood samples, the photographs, video footage and verbal reports from his agents confirmed every month that his older half-brother was still in his Gldani cell, Mycroft had been content to focus his attention on the imminent departure of his younger brother, off on his little crusade to destroy Moriarty.

As soon as Mycroft realised what Ford had done, the pieces started to fit together. The recorded conversation in Svan on the USB proved the key to unravelling the timing of Ford's escape. The "package" referred to in the conversation was not about some future attempt to smuggle a person over the border from Georgia, under the guise of a mountain climbing expedition. What the informant had not realised was that this transfer had already happened, three summers ago. Mycroft also managed to confirm that the person taken over the border had never spoken a word, and knew that this was because his half-brother no longer had a working pair of vocal chords.

The new head of the Intelligence Service, Davit Sujashvili, was more than willing to help Mycroft and Ioseliani uncover the extent of his predecessor's failings. According to the files, the guard who opened the channels of Ford's communication had been steadily promoted, eventually reaching the position of Chief Warden of the service keeping this particular prisoner secure. Under interrogation, the man revealed that the former head, Gela Bezhuashvili, had met Ford before- in America, when the Georgian was a 'mid-career student' attending the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. As soon as Gela Bezhuashvili had been appointed the new head of the Georgian Intelligence Services, things had begun to change. Ford had been at work, plotting his revenge for the past forty two months.

When Mycroft learned this, watching the prison warden being subjected to a form of interrogation that he would never have been legally allowed to use against his own prisoners, he'd felt nauseated. A few minutes later, heaving up bile in one of the most disgusting toilets he'd ever been in, all he could think of was that at any time since mid-2009, Fitzroy Ford could have destroyed both him and Sherlock, by tipping off Magnussen and getting him to print in his newspapers the story of how in 1996 Mycroft had killed three men to cover up his brother's murder of Stephen Mason**.

No sooner had he realised that fact, another came chasing after it, to make him heave again. Mycroft finally realised who had "commissioned" Moriarty's attack on both him and Sherlock. Because mere publication would not have been enough for Ford. He wanted Mycroft to _suffer, _and he wanted Sherlock dead, his reputation destroyed first.

Somehow, from somewhere, Mycroft found the means to keep going, if only to find out exactly how Ford had managed it and was still _managing_ it. All that mattered now was stopping Ford from wreaking his final revenge.

Mycroft's new understanding allowed him to pull the threads together in the plot that had more twists than a Persian carpet. The murder of the agent that Sherlock solved in the Lee Valley carpark was probably a loose end being tied up- the man had served in MI6 before coming to S&amp;ILS- perhaps he was the one who changed the DNA record. Or it could have been the female agent who ended up in pieces in the sports bag at Ryder Place. He wished he still had the assassin taken captive at the Arnsworth Castle Hotel while trying to recover the file that had been on the USB brought in by Iuri Malkhaz Chkhetidze. Unfortunately, the cyanide he'd used to try to kill Mycroft's man wasn't the only poison the man had in his possession. He'd recovered consciousness in the copter, but even cuffed, he'd been able to use his tongue to break a capsule lodged in one of his fillings. And his target wasn't much help either- he was still in a coma, nearly brain dead from the cyanide.

_Dead men can't be interrogated._ That was something Ford had told him once, long ago, standing over the bodies of the three men that he had just killed using a gun that had Mycroft's fingerprints all over it.

"Mycroft? When did you last speak to your PA?"

The fact that Esther Cohen had to repeat the question made him grimace, and close his eyes. He was so _tired_. "Two days ago."

"So, you don't know that he's disappeared since then?"

That made Mycroft snap his eyes open again. "Disappeared?" The thought of Sherlock going AWOL at the same time that Ford was out there somewhere made Mycroft's stomach clench to a whole new level of tightness. As he fought back a wave of nausea, he tried to calm himself.

_Do not panic._ The same scenario had occurred during Sherlock's two years taking down Moriarty's network but Ford had not found him. In an odd way, being undercover and out of London might well have given his little brother protection in a way that Mycroft would not have been able to do. His mind now started drawing connections between various threats over the past four months- the bonfire and the Westminster bomb, to name just two; then Sherlock's latest escapade with the five pearls, the dwarf and the poisoned dart.

A small voice in his head cautioned against over-reacting. It might be hyperbole to suspect Ford's hand behind every botched case, dead agent or unexplained mystery.

And yet…

The very idea that Ford's shadow might be somewhere in the background of the attempt to blow up Westminster when just about everyone in authority in British Intelligence was in the vicinity- it was _perfect_ as a form of revenge on the services that had imprisoned his half-brother. With Lord Moran now dead, there was very little chance he'd ever be able to track down the connection, to prove what he was now imagining.

_Dead men cannot be interrogated._ He could still hear that snide comment, uttered all those years ago, in that peculiar trans-Atlantic accent of his half-brother.

Before he could follow that thought though, Esther Cohen interrupted. "Yes, _disappeared_. No forwarding address, gone to ground- and any of the other metaphors you've used in the past to describe Sherlock's favourite avoidance tactic. This is either a breakdown or a relapse and the question is what you are going to do about it?"

Diane Goodliffe appeared to wince at the forthright directness of the psychiatrist's challenge, and she offered in a more conciliatory tone. "I've contacted John Watson, who has put out some feelers through what he called Sherlock's 'homeless network'- that was yesterday. He's heard nothing."

All Mycroft could think about these revelations was why Ketevan had not managed to find a way to get a message to him about this. Abruptly, he stood up and said. "Forgive me ladies, but I need to make a quick phone-call." He strode out of the room and straight into the loo between his study and the conservatory, where he threw up.

When he emerged, he nearly walked straight into Caroline, whose worried face betrayed the fact that she must have heard him being ill.

"Are you alright? Have you come down with something? You look…"

He cut her off. "Touch of food poisoning. Something…rather indigestible, I fear."

She took hold of his shoulders, her concern for him transmitted by the gentleness of her touch. "Poor you; how could you have ever thought of going out tonight?"

He sighed. "Give me a few more minutes. I need to make a call."

"Can't it wait? I can give your apologies to Doctor Cohen and Miss Goodliffe: why don't you go lie down?"

For a moment, he wished he could just let himself be comforted by her. But, that would not solve the problem, and he straightened his back. "I'll be done soon enough." He slipped out of her arms and went into the study, feeling her eyes follow him in there.

Mycroft called his surveillance team.

As his rotten luck today would have it, the new man Stephen Rawlings was the duty officer on tonight. "Sir- you're back. We have a situation."

"So I gather. Why haven't you or my PA called me before now?" He let more than a little of his irritation out to express his displeasure.

There was a brief pause. "She was the one who texted to say we must not telephone you- not until you landed and contacted us."

"When was that?"

"Yesterday morning, sir. And she said that your brother would be 'off the grid' for a while and not to worry about it."

Why would Keta be protecting Sherlock? It made no sense. "And just when did he elude your surveillance?"

"Disappeared the night before last, sir. His phone is still at Baker Street. Your PA's text said she was on the case; we were ordered to cease trying to locate him and she said she would inform you once you got out of the meeting with the Libyans."

So, at least she was sticking to the script of his whereabouts. Ketevan was the only one who knew where he'd really been. Was her absence and Sherlock's coincidental? _The universe is rarely so lazy._

"Sir?"

"Very well, Rawlings. I want you to resume trying to find him. Contact me immediately if you find any trace- but do not under any circumstances approach him. Do you know where my PA is? She isn't answering her phone."

"Um, the text said she was with your brother, sir- on the same mission."

"Mission?" He let his incredulity escape; "And just what was that?"

"Her text didn't say."

"Trace her phone _now-_ and get me a location."

"I'm sorry, sir. It's not been showing up on any system at the moment- it went silent after the text was sent."

There were too many unpleasant scenarios swarming into his tired mind to make sense at the moment. "Track it back. Find the point of origin of that text and contact me as soon as you've located it."

He'd just about managed to return his facial expression to its usual inscrutability as he re-entered the front sitting room. "Ladies, I thank you for your concerns, but you will have to leave this to me. My people are investigating and you can rest assured we will find him and deal with the situation."

The therapist's body language relaxed, telling him that she was willing to accept that. Esther Cohen's, however, showed anything but acceptance.

She stood up, unwilling to let him dominate her from his standing position, even though she was a good foot and a half shorter than he was.

"Mycroft. This is serious- and we need to discuss this in more detail- it's not just something to be swept aside, or dealt with by others. Why Sherlock is missing is more important than the actual fact that he is. Talking to John and Mary, and what Diane learned from Miss Hooper suggest a real problem. Self-medication when he is depressed is a risk- and you know as well as I do that his pattern is to relapse badly one to two months after a stint at rehab. We are in that danger period. Why are you ignoring him?"

"As if I could or would ignore him." Actually, he'd give anything to be able to do so, to know that his brother was safe from harm, that Ford was still in his prison and that the only thing he had to worry about was his brother's deplorable drug habits.

Esther ploughed on, "You know how badly Sherlock handles life transitions; well, John's marriage is just such a transition. He's about to lose the person around whom he has structured his life for the past four and a half years. As we heard at Hartswood, even when he was away, John Watson remained in that role. Sherlock's been apparently obsessing about the wedding planning as a way of not facing the situation- and Lestrade says he's turning down cases left, right and centre. If no longer taking an interest in The Work not a sign of depression, I don't know what is. When was the last time you spoke to him?"

Her challenge cut rather to the core of the matter. His most recent exchanges with Sherlock had been related to the two incidents involving Georgians- and had been terse to say the least. He had to shut down his brother's line of enquiry, and he was beginning to feel the same about Esther's. Mycroft's ability to manage his usual façade had been so battered by the events of the past two days that he was going to lose control if he didn't.

He gave a dismissive sniff. "We spoke a few days ago, briefly- related to a case he was working on- one that I cannot discuss with you. I saw no evidence of what you are describing. In fact, I had to tell him to cease his involvement in something that was really none of his business."

Esther started shaking her head. "You don't learn, do you? Do you remember what I said to you in the summer before he went up to university?"

Curtly, he replied, "You said a great many things that summer, Doctor Cohen. To what do you refer specifically?"

"I told you that you must not lie to him, and that it's not the mistakes he makes that matters; it's how he deals with them- and how _you_ deal with him when he does. If he thinks you are going to…" she paused as if trying to choose her words carefully, but then forged ahead, "…disapprove, or if he thinks you are lying to him, then he won't be honest with you. He's always done that. How do you know that his decision to cross your path on this case of yours wasn't actually the only way he could get you to notice what is happening to him?"

He resisted the temptation to roll his eyes again in exasperation. "If you think this is his way of attention seeking, then you don't know my brother as well as I have assumed you do for all these years. Sherlock hasn't sought my approval for anything he's done since he was seven years old."

"Since Hartswood, you've been rather conspicuous by your absence from his life, Mister Holmes. May I ask why?" The quiet contralto of the therapist cut across the glaring match going on between Esther and Mycroft.

He let something of his irritation at the interruption show. "That is at _his_ request, Miss Goodliffe. He's not dependent on me anymore. He just spent two years on his own proving that, making sure that I could not be a part of what he was doing."

Esther snapped back, "You're _still_ punishing him for that, are you?"

The therapist got to her feet and approached the arguing pair. Her stance was not threatening, as if Diane wanted the effect of her joining them to calm the conversation down. She said, "There is a difference between being the all-seeing, all-knowing figure controlling events in his life and the role of being supportive, helping him to understand and deal with his emotions. In John's absence, you'll be the only person he will let take on that role. How does that make you feel?"

Mycroft looked down at the woman. He would have given a lot to be able to express to her what he really felt, which was nothing short of _terrified_. Right now, given the fact that every moment he was in Sherlock's presence his brother would be trying to deduce who was at the other end of the Georgian connection, keeping his distance was necessary. But, he could not tell her any of that. He decided that attack was the best defence.

"Surely, that is something that you and Doctor Cohen are _trained_ to deal with? Sherlock does not seek, nor does he welcome contact with me."

His answer seemed to pain the auburn-haired woman, but it was Esther who responded first. "You _are_ the most significant figure in Sherlock's life- whether you like it or not, Mycroft Holmes. When he needs you, will you be there for Sherlock?"

Without thinking, he answered, "Of course, I will. I'm always there for him. He knows that."

She raised an eyebrow. "Does he? Really? Then why are you avoiding him now?"

Words failed him.

Esther waited. He was still struggling to find something to say when his phone vibrated.

"Excuse me." He watched her face express her frustration at the interruption.

The text was a location in northwest London. He hit re-dial. "Dispatch a team. I will meet you there."

Mycroft put his phone back in his pocket. "Excuse me ladies, but duty calls," And he left without another word.

oOo

"_Why_? I want to know why, Sherlock."

"You know the reason."

Actually, he was probably right. Ketavan had not understood his actions at first, but now she was beginning to realise how Mycroft Holmes' little brother's brain actually worked- even when he was high.

She lifted her arms up to stretch her shoulders and her neck popped as she tilted her head first left and then right. She was feeling the effects of her captivity. The past forty eight hours had crawled by. He'd left her only twice that she had been aware of, for somewhere in the region of an hour each time. _Probably to top up on the drugs. _She found it interesting that he would be reluctant to do so in front of her.

The small windowless room had been set up with the basics. There were bottles of water, a clean mattress for her, and a pair of buckets with tops that were removed and emptied when he went out, so the place didn't reek. She'd been given food, too. She didn't see him eat and he did not seem to sleep at all.

As soon as she'd realised that the game was up in her flat, she'd thought for a moment about resisting, but as soon as the idea occurred to her, his baritone rumble of a chuckle was followed by a gentle, almost bemused comment. "You know there is no point. I have no intention of hurting you, so just bear with me for a few minutes."

Sherlock had bound her hands, gagged her, put earplugs into her hears, blindfolded her eyes and then escorted her from her apartment building- down in the lift and into what she guessed was the basement garage. Throughout it all, he was gentle, and kept asking her if it was too tight or uncomfortable- it felt more like a drill than the real thing. Then she was helped into what she assumed was the back seat of a car, strapped in with a seatbelt, her cuffs looped by some sort of belt or tie to the headrest in front so she couldn't reach anything like a door handle. She tried to keep track of the time elapsed and the direction of turns, but after some forty minutes, had to admit that she had no idea where she was being taken.

Then the same process of being moved occurred in reverse, except that there was no lift involved. Sherlock picked her up out of the car. She'd always thought he didn't like to be touched- hadn't Mycroft said that to her once? But, when she was being carried, cradled in his arms like some damsel in distress, Keta realised a lot of things about Sherlock. There was whipcord muscle under that Belstaff.

_He's stronger than he looks._ And warmer, too. She'd never been in close physical contact with Sherlock before, and now the Hammam cologne was carrying an undercurrent of sweat and tobacco- it was a rather heady aroma.

Sherlock carried her down what she guessed was a flight of stairs into what she assumed was one of his infamous bolt-holes that the Surveillance Team had not yet discovered. The he gently removed the blindfold and gag, took out her earplugs and uncuffed her.

"Are you all right?"

She snorted. "What… you mean apart from being kidnapped, held against my will and being treated like a prisoner?"

He nodded, but his slightly sheepish smile showed her that he too found the situation almost amusing.

She's read the file; she knew what he was capable of, so there was no question of resisting or trying to escape. That said, she realised she wasn't frightened- rather, more than a bit _intrigued _to know what he was up to.

Looking around, Keta realised as prisons went, this one wasn't bad. It was clean and comfortably warm. Sherlock sat down in one of the other two chairs in the room. That made her curious. Who was he expecting to take the third chair?

_His brother, of course_. This whole kidnap scenario was being staged to get Mycroft's attention.

He was watching her look at the empty chair and draw her conclusions. He chuckled and said "Let's see how long it takes him to notice your absence."

Time crept by, and Sherlock told her to take the mattress and catch some sleep. "If he hasn't noticed yet, then he's either asleep or otherwise engaged; might's well make the most of it."

After trying for a while to stay awake, she gave up and left him to his work on the decoding- using her laptop, she noticed. Even with the book, going from English, into Georgian and then into Persian would take time. She wondered what he would make of her last Facebook post and whether he'd spot the coded message she'd left for her father: from Georgian, into Persian and then English, eventually he'd be able to read it as "expect package am; special delivery" – not particularly original she had to admit, but it was her father's phrase for Mycroft.

"He's special, Keta- the whole of the British Government in one neat package; don't let the placid exterior fool you. Holmes is the cleverest person alive- and you will be safe with him. Learn what you can; he can teach you more than I will ever be able to here."

When she woke up, she had no idea how much time had passed; Sherlock had taken her watch off before they left her flat. She stretched and then realised she needed a pee.

"Use the yellow bucket. Then wash your hands with bottled water, into the drain in the corner."

She smiled ruefully. Both Holmes brothers liked to show off that they knew what she was thinking without her having to express it. He turned his chair away to give her a modicum of privacy, and for that, she was grateful.

When he turned around again, she saw he was typing something into her phone.

"What are you saying to him?" She knew he'd be texting his brother, but pretending to be her.

"The truth."

That made her laugh. "About this? Are you tired of waiting? You could have used your own phone for that."

"You just told him that I arrived at your flat and took the book away from you and I am working on the code."

"Why would you tell him that?"

He smirked. "Because you're right; I am bored with waiting. Whether he shows up now, or waits until he's back from his little plane trip will tell me a lot about what's on those files, even before I finish decoding them."

There was no reply to his text- and nothing much happened, either. He gave her a sandwich, which she ate, and she had more water. Hours passed with him engrossed in the file that was up on his Surface, whilst rifling through the pages of her copy of the _Shahnameh_. She knew it was only a matter of time before he de-coded the two documents. She started thinking about the contents and what he would make of them. The first was simple- just the report of the prisoner's past month- a Word file. The second file contained embedded images- video, stills of that prisoner. Mundane and rather meaningless, if you didn't know where, when or who was involved.

Time stretched out. He left the room, after apologising for cuffing her to the cast iron water pipe alongside the mattress. He unlocked the door and then locked it again from the outside. She was bored while he was away, and decided that she rather enjoyed watching him work on the code. She'd not had the opportunity to really observe him properly at such close quarters for such a long period of time. CCTV wasn't the same. It didn't catch the essence of the man.

Whereas Mycroft was all about a metallic almost cast-iron solidity, exuding assurance and authority, his brother was more like quicksilver. Even when engrossed in the decoding, his body moved, as if driven by the restless energy that characterised his thought processes. _They are so different- and yet so alike._

She decided he was taking stimulants; even in the dim light of the room, she could see his pupils were as dilated as they had been when he was at her flat.

He stood up and stretched at one point and then had a pee himself, turning his back on her.

She sat back down on the mattress, to give her back a chance to rest from the hard plastic chair. Eventually, Sherlock put the laptop away, and just sat staring at the wall for a long while, no doubt processing what he had discovered on the files, and putting the data together with the conversation he'd translated. Even then, he wasn't motionless. His hands moved, as if he was shifting something that wasn't there. She'd seen him do this before, on footage from the flat and knew that he had a virtual evidence board.

She must have drifted off at some point, because when she awoke, he had turned his chair to face her, and Keta realised that he must have put some elements together. She didn't think that Sherlock really expected her to answer his questions. But she was surprised by the direction of his first question.

"You started working for my brother in 2001. Why then? Why did he need a PA from Georgia? You weren't trained by MI5 or 6, and you are far too intelligent to have worked for GCHQ. Your English was excellent. Good enough to pass for a native. How did that happen?"

It was asked in a conversational tone- the sort of "getting to know you" approach one might take on a first date. That thought made her smirk. Sherlock Holmes' idea of that involved kidnapping and handcuffing, then small talk in an interrogation room. Some of the slightly edgy, predatory intimidation of the confrontation at her flat was still there she noticed. Unlike Mycroft's solidity and mineral certainty, his brother was the exact opposite- all fluid motion, just barely held in check. For the first time, she understood what CCTV failed to capture- his animal magnetism.

She did not feel threatened by him. Keta knew that he would not harm her, because she was sure of one thing - if Sherlock did hurt her, Mycroft Holmes would ensure he would regret it. She was safe in the assurance of his brother's protection. She knew it; he knew it, too. Perhaps for that reason, she felt she could deal with him as an equal, no matter how strange her current situation.

"I'll answer your question, but you'll have to answer one of mine in exchange."

That earned her a quirk of a smile and a tiny nod.

"I am English. I was born in this country and I have an English passport. My mother was English. I went to boarding school in Kent. Then did languages at Canterbury before going abroad."

A knowing smile bloomed on Sherlock's lips. "Daddy's favourite little girl," he whispered.

She realised he was looking at her intently- deducing her blatantly. All she could think of was how differently his brother did the same thing, but always behind a façade of polite sociability. Mycroft was a master at hiding his deductions; Sherlock was shamelessly blatant in his.

"You're about the same age as me, maybe a year younger. He recruited you in Georgia. I was in rehab at the time you showed up."

"Actually, you'd gone walk-about. I'm surprised you even remember meeting me; you were rather high at the time."

Keta remembered it well. When the telephone call had come through from the rehab facility, she'd been in the car with Mycroft, working with him on the way back from the airport, briefing him on the meetings he would be facing later that day. They'd been working together for about three months, but he was already trusting her to a degree that sometimes startled her.

The man her father called 'The British Government' rolled his eyes in dismay at whatever was being said on the other end of the phone call, before he snapped. "I thought the fees you are being paid would have sufficed to guarantee you kept my brother securely locked up." There was another delay, presumably while the medical staff made their excuses, then Mycroft asked, rather wearily, "How long has he been out?"

For a moment, Keta wondered whether something had happened in Tbilisi, but then realised he must be talking about his other brother, whom she'd heard about vaguely, from the other S&amp;IL staff. She looked up from her blackberry and then pointedly out the window. There was no real way to give her boss the privacy that this call seemed to demand.

"Very well. I will find him and return him as soon as I can."

The intercom to the chauffeur was clicked on with some force. "Stimson, head to West Wickham." Then he was on the phone to the office, with someone she assumed was manning the surveillance desk this afternoon. "Someone seems to have missed the fact that my brother has left the Priory. Get onto the CCTV and give me a direction of travel and last known whereabouts."

The order was given in what Ketavan was beginning to recognise as his most authoritative tone of voice- the "do-as-I-say-right-now-and- you-might-live" tone. He managed to sound even scarier than her father, and that was saying a great deal.

Mycroft started scrolling through his phone numbers, then connected with one. "Good afternoon, Doctor Cohen. Whatever you said to him today, he's gone walkabout. Any ideas where?" It was as nonchalant as if he were asking a neighbour about a dog that had gone astray.

Whatever this doctor said, it gave Mycroft enough information to think about in silence for the next ten minutes. When the car crossed the Thames, heading south, the phone rang and he answered.

"Yes."

After listening for a minute, he replied. "Don't approach him, and _don't_ let it happen again."

Mycroft thumbed the intercom again to the driver. "The Omega Café on the A232. He's sitting out front, apparently."

He turned to her with a slightly strained smile.

"I suppose, my dear, as you are one of the few souls on earth who knows about my elder sibling rotting in a prison cell, I should introduce you to my other brother, Sherlock. At this moment, he's supposed to be in a securely locked room at a rehab centre. Ironic –my two siblings behind bars. The two facts are not unconnected."

He looked out the window, as if deciding something. "My dear, I am going to trust you with information that is even more important than a state secret. Under no circumstances must Sherlock ever learn that he has an older half-brother. That is something I have successfully managed to keep from him ever since I myself found out about the blood ties to the man you know to be rotting in Gldani prison. My half- brother is a bastard in more ways than one; he has tried on several occasions to have Sherlock killed. He is also the person behind addicting Sherlock to cocaine when he was seventeen. And we are still dealing with the consequences of that."

The car turned off the Streatham High Street, taking a left onto the A214. He kept his eyes on his umbrella handle, rather than look at her.

"My dear, I would not burden you with this tedious family history, except for one fact. No doubt, there will be occasions when Sherlock requires my attention when I am not available. So, it is best you know it all now, so that if needs be, I can trust you to do the right thing."

As the car made its way southward through Norwood, he then told her the story of his younger brother. Of the whys and wherefores that led him to be Sherlock's legal guardian. Of the trials and tribulations of his time at school, and then university. And how, unlike her, his little brother had not yet been able to find a way to make the transition from university into employment and life as an independent adult.

"He is under continuous surveillance, as a protected family member. I use my own people in preference to the SO6 people; well, it seems sensible." And he told her about Sherlock's drug problems that had ended with his sectioning two months ago. "He's in the Priory hospital in Hayes, chosen because it is only a mile away from Doctor Cohen, who works at the National Autism Centre at the Bethlem Hospital. He's been her patient since he was ten- she met him there when he'd been admitted after trying to kill himself with a drugs overdose. He was in a paediatric clinic at the time, being treated for a major depressive episode, mutism, and catatonia."

The idea of a ten year old trying to kill himself with drugs shocked her. Keta's exposure to drugs was very limited. Her university days had been spent studying and her girlfriends had no idea she was from Tbilisi- her mother was from Norfolk, and holidays were spent at her grandparents' house in Barford, eight miles from Norwich. She'd stayed away from boys- the uni lads were, well…just so immature compared to the young men she'd had limited contact with in Georgia. To say her father was protective was an understatement, but then she'd done little to provoke him- and had agreed to take this position with a man her father trusted completely. After three months, she knew why- and agreed with her father's opinion of the man now sitting beside her in the car.

Whatever she was expecting in terms of her boss's reactions to his brother's drug use, the reality was quite different. He asked the chauffeur to drive up Croydon Road, and then park along the front of a parade of perhaps a dozen small ground floor shops, the flats above were in a mock Tudor style. Mycroft got out, and then almost on a whim leaned back into the car and said, "Come with me."

Keta walked with him to the far end of the parade, to a small family owned café called The Omega. Out front were four metal chairs and two little tables. Only one chair was occupied by a lanky youth with rather wild dark hair. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses, and dressed in jeans with a hoodie, smoking rather furiously. There were three empty espresso cups in front of him, and the crumpled remains of an empty cigarette pack. He did not look anything like her boss, and she would not have assumed that they were related.

Mycroft stopped in front of the youth and held out his hand, palm up. "Let me see it."

The young man blew a smoke ring at him, somehow turning it into an act of extraordinary insolence. Then he stubbed the cigarette out and reached into the pocket of the hoodie, handing over a scrap of paper, which Mycroft read.

"Not very original this time."

Sherlock grinned. "Little short of cash, so I had to settle for cheap and cheerful."

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "What did you expect? This is leafy suburbia."

"There are two secondary schools within a mile of here and there's some sort of college up the road; I thought that would surely be a source of income for some more enterprising dealer."

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "Nash College is for students with learning difficulties***, a place that might be appropriate for you, Sherlock, if you can't learn to manage your deplorable habits better."

For a moment, the young man seemed to go completely still, and something fierce seemed to take hold of his features. Sherlock took off his sunglasses, so the full weight of his glare could be seen- as well as the dilation of his pupils.

Then he seemed to register her presence for the first time. "Oh! Your recruitment tastes are improving. She's better than your usual identikit Etonians." He was looking at Ketavan with intense scrutiny- and that's when she saw the family resemblance.

"Get in the car. I'm not about to let this little mishap derail you."

Sherlock snorted. "I wasn't going anywhere- just wanted to show you that I could, if I really wanted to." Mycroft reached down to help his brother get to his feet, but the young man evaded his grip and stood by himself, then headed off rather wobbly towards the parked car.

Her boss sighed, and fished a twenty pound note from his wallet, dropping it beside the ashtray full of fag ends.

Sherlock gave a sarcastic half salute to the driver, who was standing beside the car. "Afternoon, Stimson. Ta for the lift. Could have used you earlier when I was popping out for some light refreshment."

She had been struck at the time by the fact that Sherlock was totally unabashed about being caught, and that her boss did not seem particularly distressed by his escape from the hospital. Through all the travails that had followed over the years, that first occasion had always stuck with her.

The memory emboldened her. "I've answered yours, Sherlock, so here's my first question for you- why are you high again? I thought that was all behind you now."

"Do you have any idea what is like to have Mycroft running your life?" He smirked. "Yes, of course, you do. He's like your father only on steroids. Bigger, smarter, scarier. Someone to look up to. You're not afraid of him, though; you've never had reason to be. You trust him, because he trusts you. You'd do anything for him, anything to please him, to live up to the trust he puts in you. You have no social life, but that doesn't bother you at all, because you get your kicks out of being indispensable to him. You're _needed_\- and that's what you want, to be seen as invaluable to someone as powerful as he is."

He was right- and she didn't mind the deductions. If he's asked, she would have said something to the same effect- if not in the same words. He looked away, over at the empty chair. "Now imagine if he didn't- he didn't trust you. He didn't think you were worthy; you're the stupid one, the defective, the disappointment. He has absolutely no _need_ of you; in fact, you are an embarrassment, an encumbrance, a nuisance."

When he looked back at her, she realised he wasn't sparing her. "So, if you were me, Keta, in that situation what would you do?"

"Don't put your drug habit on him. He's not the one who takes the pills or injects the drugs, Sherlock."

Sherlock laughed and shook his head. "I don't blame him. The only time I feel good about myself is when I'm high. It lets me pretend I'm normal. Cuts through the chemical disaster that is my brain, and allows me to concentrate. I'm using drugs now because I need to concentrate, so I can find out why he is lying to me again."

"Sherlock…" Keta looked at the empty chair. "You can ask him yourself when he gets here. How much longer do you think he will be?"

"That depends on when he calls your team and gets the message you texted them."

"When was that? What did I say?" He must have used her phone when she was asleep.

"That they were to stand down their surveillance on me and you until you texted again. We're on a mission, it would seem, and must not be interfered with."

"How long do you expect our _mission_ to last?"

Sherlock sniffed. "Well, he's certainly not doing what you put in his diary. So, no trip to Tunis for talks with Libyan contacts. He's gone to Tbilisi, trying to track down something related to the prisoner mentioned in the file. He's gone himself for some particular reason, because whoever is behind the recent murders is making him nervous and unsure about whether he can rely on his usual chain of command in Georgia. This is clearly a private trip, which tells me a lot. He's so lazy that he wouldn't go himself unless he cared a lot. And here's my next question for you, _why_ is he lying to me, and what does it have to do with the prisoner who is planning to escape from Tbilisi? Why would my brother _care_ so much about that fact?"

At that point, Ketavan tried very, very hard to make sure that she betrayed nothing of her relief. Yes, he had put everything together correctly. But, she now knew that Elizabeth Ffoukes had not told Sherlock who the prisoner was. It was the only loophole in the whole construct. When the decision had been made to incarcerate Fitzroy Ford back in 2001, Ffoukes had been in the room- and knew Fitzroy Ford was related to Mycroft. Mycroft could not have predicted that eleven years later his little brother would forge his own working relationship with the DG of MI6.

She just smiled. "As I said, you'll have to ask him yourself."

Sherlock shrugged and looked back down at the phone. "When he lands, he'll get them to trace the text back – I made no attempt to hide our location."

"So, how long will it take him? Let's make a bet." She made her voice playful, teasing.

That made him look up at her again. "You're very confident."

"I have every reason to be."

He drew a shaky breath, and she realised that her comment had made him sad. "Sherlock, why does that bother you?" His reaction surprised her.

"You've known him for thirteen years, and yet he trusts you more than he has ever trusted me. He knows you won't have told me anything."

"Then what is all _this_ …" she gestured around the room, "…for? Why go through this little charade?"

He wouldn't meet her eye. "To prove a point. I'm not going to give up. He is more than happy to continue lying to me, and yet willing to trust his secrets with you. I'm not stupid; _you_ know exactly why he's gone to Georgia, and it's the same reason why he keeps you close to him. You're important to him in some way that I will never be. Not his fault. I was born this way. You're worthy of his trust; I'm not."

"Sherlock…" She wanted to find a way, to make him see what she knew, that Mycroft loved his brother in a way that he cared about no one else. "You're so wrong about this." It made her both sad for Sherlock and yet angry, too. He had never understood the pain that his plot with Elizabeth Ffoukes had inflicted on his brother. She had spent two years watching worry and guilt eat away at Mycroft.

They both heard a noise- somewhere outside the room, above them.

"Want to bet? When he walks in the door, his first thought will be about you, wanting to know if you are all right, if I have harmed you in any way. You'll see."

The next sound they heard was a ram that smashed through the lock, and then the room was swarming with black uniformed men. Sherlock did not resist when they threw him off the chair and onto the floor, cuffing his hands behind his back and then started to drag him out of the room.

She was on her feet, shouting at them not to hurt him, when Rawlings appeared at her side and pulled her away from Sherlock, as he was taken away.

When a moment later Mycroft walked in, he glanced around the room, took in the sight of the Surface tablet, her laptop and phone- and then the three chairs. He rolled his eyes, "Did he really think we were going to sit down and have a cosy little chat?"

"Sir…"

"Did he harm you in any way, my dear?"

"No, of course not."

Her tone of voice must have expressed some of her disappointment in him for that question. It earned her a raised eyebrow. "Stockholm syndrome? I would have thought you'd be glad to see him suffer a bit for what he's put you through."

She shook her head vehemently. "It wasn't like that. What will happen to him?"

Mycroft heard the protective tone in her voice, and came closer to face her, looking very intently at her. "What did he do to you? When he's high, he can be impulsive and …rather uninhibited."

To her surprise, she found herself blushing. "No, sir, nothing like that. He treated me well. He just took me with him to keep me out of action long enough to do the decoding. And he wanted to…" she came to a halt, not sure how to put it into words. Lamely, she finished, "…I'll explain it in the car."

Outside the office block, she realised it was dark- and late. Agents were loading a black panelled van with a limp figure, and she found herself hoping that they wouldn't hurt him in the process.

"We'll take you home, my dear."

Mycroft opened the car door for her, but Keta hesitated, her eyes on the black van pulling away. "Where will he be taken?"

"Baker Street. Rawlings will babysit tonight. I'm too tired to deal with Sherlock now. I've learned over the years that he escapes prisons, if I'm foolish enough to put him in one." He suddenly stopped. "Oh, Lord…the irony of that."

"Sir?"

He gestured into the car. "I'll explain, once you've debriefed me on what he did."

In the car, on her way home, Ketavan explained, noting as she spoke how tired Mycroft was. When she explained that Sherlock had deduced the existence of the prisoner, but not his identity, she expected him to be relieved. The fact that the good news was not taken as such set off alarm bells.

"What happened, sir? What did you find?"

He gave her a pained smile. "Take the worst case scenario and then treble the horror, my dear. Our pigeon flew the coop some time ago, and has been out for the past three years planning our Armageddon."

"Gone?!" She whispered this, so shocked that she didn't have breath to make it louder.

"Indeed. In the wind, plotting his revenge."

"Will my father be safe?"

"That is a good question. We don't know the extent to which Ford will target those who played a peripheral role; my guess is that he will focus most of his efforts on me- and Sherlock."

She thought it through. "He had to have someone in London, someone to falsify the records."

"Presumably. I'll think about that tomorrow. I will need your help."

"Sir, why won't you tell Sherlock about Ford? He could help, too."

Mycroft gave her a sharp look, as if seeing her for the first time.

"You have not said anything, have you?"

There was just a hint of menace that she had never heard directed towards her before. Ketavan felt like someone had opened the door of a deep-freeze. His suspicion hung in the air between them.

"No, of course not. But, I … " she stopped, struggling to find the best way to put it. "Given the situation now, sir, might it not be better that he knows? I mean, what real harm would there be in his knowing?"

Mycroft's face was stony. "Apart from having to confess that I've been lying to him for the past twenty years? Sherlock already thinks the worse of me; learning about that might just about destroy any hope of him ever listening to me again. And he will need to listen, now that Ford is back on the scene."

He straightened his tie. "The second reason is that in his current state of mind, if Sherlock were to learn that the only person he was ever loved- our mother- abandoned her first child, even if he was a bastard, it would destroy his memory of her. I can't do that to him. His mental state is too fragile to deal with that now." He looked out of the window into the darkness. "And Ford has tried to have Sherlock killed- at least twice, by my reckoning. There is only one scenario worse than that."

"Sir?" She didn't understand what could be worse than Sherlock being murdered by Ford; she thought Mycroft would give his own life to stop that from happening. That Sherlock did not know this fact just made her sad, somehow. "What could possibly be worse?"

"What do you think would happen if Ford ever managed to convince Sherlock to join him? Two against one? I doubt I'd be able to win, given those odds."

The rest of the journey passed in silence.

* * *

**Author's notes**:

* This is covered in _Magpie: One for Sorrow_.

** and this is covered in _Periodic Tales, Holmium_ and the _Ex Files, Extort_

***Nash College is real. Between it and the National Autism Research Centre at Bethlem Hospital, you will also find NAS, the National Autistic Society. There are reasons why Mycroft put Sherlock into the nearest Priory Hospital to these two.


End file.
